Courtesy

Courtesy gives brief encounters an easy rhythm

At the museum doorway, you and a stranger each step aside. You both step forward. You both step aside again. A small dance has begun without a rehearsal or a ticket price. You smile, make one clear invitation and wait while they pass. The performance ends with both people inside.

Finding the balance in Courtesy

Resolve a mutual doorway hesitation with one clear invitation and a pause.

Courtesy works at the scale of the exchange. Enough clarity and consideration can do more than an elaborate display of manners.

What Courtesy makes possible

Considerate gestures can make an unfamiliar place easier to enter. A clear answer, an ordinary greeting or a little room to pass tells someone how to proceed without making them earn attention. Courtesy also gives shared life a kind of grace: a tiny awkwardness can end with a smile instead of becoming a contest over who caused it.

Courtesy in ordinary life

A busy counter

Get the worker’s attention before beginning a long question, then thank them for the answer.

A crowded coat rack

Move your bag out of the way while someone retrieves their coat.

Nearby virtues, different work

Benevolence

Benevolence wishes people well; Courtesy gives that regard an ordinary, recognizable form.

Generosity

Generosity offers a freely given resource or effort; Courtesy concerns the consideration due in the encounter itself.

Courtesy and its counterfeits

Rank-sensitive manners

Being gracious only to someone influential counterfeits Courtesy. Ordinary consideration does not require a useful connection.

Ceremony that traps

Insisting on helping after the other person has declined can counterfeit Courtesy. Let the gesture end when it has served its purpose.

How to cultivate Courtesy

1. Make a small gesture easy to understand.

2. Leave room for the other person’s answer.

3. Use the same basic consideration with people of different status.

Try it today

Make one ordinary encounter easier through a clear gesture, a brief greeting or a useful answer. Let it remain small.

Questions worth returning to

• Does my gesture help the other person proceed?
• Would I offer the same consideration if nobody noticed?

Quotations and further reading

Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.

1. They put our intercourse upon the basis of a friendly co-operation, an easy give-and-take, instead of on the basis of superiors dictating to inferiors.

   A. G. Gardiner · Many Furrows · On Saying “Please”

   “They” refers to the small courtesies “Please” and “Thank you.” Gardiner values them as acknowledgments between people, giving ordinary service a footing of cooperation.

2. It is the little habits of commonplace intercourse that make up the great sum of life and sweeten or make bitter the journey.

   A. G. Gardiner · Leaves in the Wind · On the Rule of the Road

   Gardiner returns from disputes about liberty to everyday conduct in a railway carriage. A doorway gesture belongs to this cumulative life of small encounters.

3. Poe was very cordial, in a quiet way, appear'd well in person, dress, &c. I have a distinct and pleasing remembrance of his looks, voice, manner and matter; very kindly and human, but subdued, perhaps a little jaded.

   Walt Whitman · Complete Prose Works · Specimen Days, Broadway Sights

   Whitman remembers meeting Poe in a New York editorial office. Quiet friendliness survives in his memory without a performance of enthusiasm. Courtesy can make a brief encounter welcoming while letting a tired person remain tired.

4. I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fish-wife across the kennel; or assists the apple-woman to pick up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just dissipated.

   Charles Lamb · Elia and The Last Essays of Elia · Modern Gallantry

   Lamb tests fashionable gallantry against the treatment of women selling food in the street. His apple seller makes the point concrete: manners count in the useful assistance offered to a stranger, not only in polished company.

5. For in that Theatre, not only the walking gentlemen, singing chambermaids, and diligent fiddlers in the orchestra, but those who look on and clap their hands from the benches, do really play a part and fulfil important offices towards the general result.

   Robert Louis Stevenson · Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers · An Apology for Idlers

   Stevenson’s theater metaphor includes the audience in the work of making a good occasion. Ordinary acknowledgment and participation help a shared experience succeed.

6. The secret of success in society, is a certain heartiness and sympathy.

   Ralph Waldo Emerson · Essays · Manners

   Emerson is considering the good nature that makes someone agreeable in company. Courtesy draws its life from that interest in others, which helps a small gesture feel easy instead of ceremonial.

7. What if the false gentleman contrives so to address his companion, as civilly to exclude all others from his discourse, and also to make them feel excluded?

   Ralph Waldo Emerson · Essays · Manners

   Emerson questions a polished manner used to shut people out. The outward form of politeness has failed if it makes an ordinary encounter more needlessly difficult for someone else.

Continue through the catalog