Treat Everyone with Dignity and Respect

A name came to me recently – I couldn’t tell you precisely why – a rather poetic name, as it happens. Chances are good you never heard of him. Earl Nightingale was one of the few survivors of the battleship Argonia, bombed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Nightingale later became a nationally-renowned speaker and author. His stock-in-trade was relationships, that is, getting along better with others. One of his most widely-quoted bits of wisdom was “Getting along with other people remains the world’s most needed skill. With it, there is no limit to what a person can do. We need people, but above all we need the cooperation of others. There is little we can accomplish alone.” (Shades of Dale Carnegie and his making-friends-and-influencing-people mantra!)

A friend shared an anecdote with me once about a local entrepreneur whose business here in Baltimore was training executives to improve their communications skills. He’d video them in mock exercises, and they’d watch themselves and exclaim, “No wonder people run from me.” Despite being leaders of industry, they had no idea how poorly they communicated or related to others. In another instance it was revealed by a job recruiter why young people were rejected when it came to job interviews. It was because they are often extremely poor communicators.

Getting along with others, and all it entails, is the essence of what I’m attempting to communicate here. My grandfather, of blessed memory, R. Zalman Dov ben Yitzchak, a humble man and gifted Torah scholar, shared a smattering of his life-sustaining wisdom with me, which I’ve managed to incorporate into my own social orientation. His advice is as relevant now as it was then, despite coming to me from decades and experiences far away in time and place. Zaidy taught me and my brothers that if you look deeply into the heart of a neighbor you can see yourself, and you come to realize that each human being is unique and cherished. Mindful of this truth, we must treat everyone with dignity and respect. For those of us fortunate enough to have been blessed at an early age by the presence and influence of that immigrant generation, this universal wisdom was well worth heeding.

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I visited the local library recently, as I often did before its current closure. I’m not the well-versed technical guru these places now require you to be. I much prefer the libraries of old, where all you needed to feel comfortable was a love of books and an appreciation for the quietness that reigned there. These modern libraries are noisier than their earlier versions were, and I happened to overhear a conversation that was a bit troubling. It was between young people and a senior on the subject of our doom-and-gloom world. They were in agreement that the news is downright dreadful. The senior related how he had stopped reading the local paper, it depressed him so. Hopelessness and helplessness was the theme of their dialogue. They concluded that this has become a mirthless planet, with no tangible solutions offered between the generations. I thought of my grandfather’s sage advice on getting along with others as a possible way to deal with the ills we seem to be confronting lately. He felt that getting along was the cornerstone of building a better life, at the very least.

This was the theme of Earl Nightingale, mentioned above, as well – because, in truth, no one seems to get along very well, anymore: not nations, not neighbors, not our own political parties, presently at each other’s throats in their unrelenting struggle for prominence and power. As for the young people in the library, as far as I could surmise, none of them came away with any solution to the planet’s doldrums, despite the senior’s sharing his experiences and insights.

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Both related and unrelated to all this, as I piecemeal the fragments together searching for illusive truths, I am captivated by an article in a celebrated national magazine about a girl who was born blind and undergoes surgery to give her sight. It works but not in the way she thought it would. With her vision restored, the world is a dreary place. She sees people whose faces are sad and whose lives are problematic. So many of those she comes in contact with are uncaring, unconcerned, and unfeeling. So she asks herself why it is that so much unhappiness, depression, and unconnectedness prevails in the world? Why are there so few smiles, so little laughter? And why is there so much hatred in the world?

Deeply troubled by this conundrum, it came to me that, to change the seemingly sad state of societal woes, what we need – and it all returned to my grandfather’s accumulated wisdom – is tolerance, sensitivity, and consideration. It is as if my grandfather and this young girl had somehow reached out to each other over vastly different times, experiences, and places and had come up with not dissimilar truths.

*  *  *

Searching for the value and beauty in each of us is the paramount goal. It is missing at present in our daily lives, which are sometimes focused on greed, status, and the accumulation of material things. Changing our outlook on how we perceive humankind overall is another matter that badly needs consideration, which goes back, again, to finding a genuine love of, and appreciation for, others. That crusty curmudgeon, President Harry Truman, who is often remembered for his decision to foist atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, left us with this post-World War II rejoinder: “We must build a new world, a far better world, one in which the eternal dignity of man is respected.”

Years ago, a revered rabbi taught at a yeshiva but because of his childless marriage felt a great emptiness in his life. Still, many of his students became his substitute family. With this blessing, he viewed everyone in a positive manner and never was critical of anyone. His life and lifestyle was a lesson in humility and consistency. He adopted the approach that he would treat others no more and no less than he wanted to be treated. He told his students that it wasn’t as much what you said but how. And he never forgot to remind his students that every person with whom you are in contact is unique. This adored teacher was my seventh grade Rebbe, who often reminded me of my grandfather.

So, in assembling the life lessons here – from my grandfather, from Earl Nightingale, from the girl in the magazine story, and from my Rebbe – I conclude with this newfound understanding: Let us join together rather than remain apart. Let us become a singular community, part of the family of humankind, serving Hashem and striving for a perfect heart and mind.

Richard Milhous Nixon, 37^th president of the United States, liked to tell a favorite anecdote about a young girl, frantically losing grip on a heavy placard she was attempting to hold up. It read, “Mr. President, bring us together once again.” And, lehavdil, in Psalm 133, Dovid Hamelech once said, for the ages: “How good and pleasant it is for families to live together in unity.”

It might well be a message for our time.

Avrum Samuel Shavrick, Ph.D. is a former Director of Education, Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and former principal for students with severe and multiple disabilities, asshavrick@gmail.com.