Too little
The extra nuisance
They can fetch it if they want it.
The pause becomes an opportunity to impose inconvenience unrelated to play.
Courtesy
Let ordinary consideration survive a lively rivalry.
A habitual disposition to show ordinary consideration without regard to advantage or rank.
Courtesy gives other people the small consideration that makes shared activity agreeable. Sport offers plenty of occasions: returning a ball, allowing someone to get ready, acknowledging the person across the table. These actions need not soften your effort to win the next point. They recognize someone you are playing with as well as against.
Courtesy gives a rivalry people want to renew
The table-tennis ball has rolled under your chair. You retrieve it after a long rally and have a brief, ridiculous thought: returning it awkwardly might be your most effective shot of the match. Instead, you make a gentle toss to your opponent and wait until they are ready. The next rally is fiercely contested. The ball has already had its one gentle journey.
Finding the balance in Courtesy
Between table-tennis points, you choose whether to return the ball helpfully or make a little difficulty for your opponent.
A fitting response
An easy return
Here you are. Ready?
A small considerate action makes the next genuine contest possible.
Pursued too far
The compulsory friendship
We must be warm friends before we can play properly.
Ordinary respect becomes a demand for intimacy or a particular social style.
Courtesy keeps incidental friction from becoming part of the score.
What Courtesy makes possible
Consideration can give a session rhythm. Fewer avoidable irritations compete with the game, and newcomers have a clearer sense that they belong in the room. It is especially valuable when nobody gains status by offering it: towards a substitute, a beginner, or the person tidying the hall. Different people show warmth differently; attentive conduct matters more than a rehearsed performance of charm.
Courtesy in ordinary life
An unfamiliar name
Ask how someone prefers to be addressed and use it with the same care you give a well-known player’s name.
Finishing up
Make room for the next group instead of treating their booked time as an extension of yours.
Nearby virtues, different work
Fairness
Fairness concerns the terms and judgments of the contest; Courtesy concerns ordinary consideration in the encounter.
Compassion
Compassion responds to suffering. Courtesy need not wait until somebody is distressed.
Courtesy and its counterfeits
Polite obstruction
A smiling delay can still be intended to unsettle or inconvenience someone.
Manners for important people
Selective charm follows advantage rather than consideration.
How to cultivate Courtesy
Notice the small practical need before waiting for someone to ask.
Keep acknowledgments simple enough that a tired or quiet person can receive them easily.
When customs differ, ask rather than interpreting unfamiliar manners as contempt.
Try it today
At an ordinary game or shared activity, make one transition easier for another participant: a clear handover, a returned item, or room to move.
Questions worth returning to
- Which inconvenience could I remove without making a performance of it?
- Do I offer the same consideration to people who cannot improve my standing?
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
I was especially impressed with the friendliness of the two of them, especially towards me, a colored boy. In my youthful mind the thought flashed that men can be champions and still be broad-minded in strange contrast with the young would-be champions that I had met in and about Indianapolis.
Marshall W. “Major” Taylor · The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World · Chapter 3
The young Taylor remembers champions who welcomed him without the racism he met among would-be champions. Their standing made ordinary consideration more conspicuous, not less necessary.
He had a temper which in its perfect serenity was a most valuable golfing asset to himself, and also most valuable in the charm of the companionship which it brought into a round of golf with him.
Horace G. Hutchinson · Fifty Years of Golf · The First Amateur Championship
Henry Lamb’s steadiness improves the round for his opponent as well as for himself. Consideration has this shared effect even when both players remain intent on winning.
It was the first and most striking characteristic of Socrates never to become heated in discourse, never to utter an injurious or insulting word—on the contrary, he persistently bore insult from others and thus put an end to the fray.
Epictetus · The Golden Sayings of Epictetus · Saying LXIV · Hastings Crossley translation
Epictetus praises Socrates for keeping disagreement free of insult. Refusing to add humiliation leaves room for a firm objection to a disputed call.
…his conversation being an example how a man might accommodate himself to all men and companies; so that though his company were sweeter and more pleasing than any flatterer's cogging and fawning; yet was it at the same time most respected and reverenced…
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations · Book I · VI · Meric Casaubon translation
Marcus remembers Sextus as agreeable without flattering. Considerate conduct can have the same firmness: return a ball conveniently, then play the next point with full competitive attention.
It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us.
William James · Talks to Teachers and to Students · On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings
James connects respect with allowing harmless interests that we do not share or understand. The unfamiliar beginner or unfashionable game can receive consideration before it earns our enthusiasm.
…if a fielder throws unmercifully at the bowler or wicket-keeper when there is no attempt at a run on the part of the batsmen, he must be spoken to. It is a bad fault on the part of a fieldsman to knock the poor wicket-keeper’s hands to pieces for no purpose.
A. G. Steel · Cricket · Chapter IV · Captaincy
Steel objects to a needlessly hard return when no run is being attempted. Between competitive actions, consideration has a practical form: return the ball in a way the other person can receive.
There is not any benefit so glorious in itself, but it may yet be exceedingly sweetened and improved by the manner of conferring it.
L’Estrange’s adaptation of Seneca distinguishes a helpful act from the manner in which it arrives. Even returning equipment can preserve or diminish another person’s dignity.
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Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.