Here is another example of not just kindness, but of enlightened self-interest. The elderly woman was eating by herself, something she did often. The young man, for both reasons noted above, asked to join her.

The truth is that old people have a lot to contribute to the young, and young people with sense will gather it up. On the other side of the table, this young man found eighty years of experience, happy to share. It took this woman decades – many decades – to learn many things. The young man, for merely the cost of a kind action, found access to them.

* * * * *

Before you go back to the mundane, consider that self-interest and kindness travel together, and that it’s not necessary (or even optimal) to give one up in order to get the other.