Patty’s Ponderings: Honesty–A Lost Art?

The cynical philosophy of “no good deed goes unpunished” was very much on my mind when I read the story of a good Samaritan in Missouri. A young auto detailer business owner, was outside a hardware store, saw an envelope on the ground and picked it up. Inside the envelope was twelve hundred dollars in cash.

Believing that someone in the hardware store must have dropped it, he went in and proceeded to find the owner and return the envelope. The owner’s comment to him was, “I hope it’s all there.” This self-admitted somewhat scruffy looking young man was expecting a simple thank you, not a snottily issued reproach.

I’m hoping that anyone who read that story was as dejected and exasperated as I was. In a world where honesty and simple kindness are sorely lacking, where recrimination has replaced forgiveness, where hatred is sown like wheat in fields; you’d think a humble thank you would have been the least the young gentleman received from that ungrateful, shameless reprobate!