A lawyer catches a glimpse of the divine when his
shoes are shined at the airport:
Hunched over, he toiled for what seemed an impossibly long stretch. The diligent and humble effort reminded me of something St. Thérèse of Lisieux said about the merits of redemptive suffering. “I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies,” said the 19th-century Carmelite nun. “To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.” From where I sat, that’s what the worker was doing: a small thing with great love.
There seemed no past or future, only a continuous present in which he was fully engaged. How often I selfishly worry about tomorrow or dwell on yesterday. Yet this man knew, as the proverb goes, how to be where your feet are.
His efforts breathed new life into my wingtips. Shoes that could have been mistaken for the worn-out kicks of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Mr. Bojangles suddenly looked good enough to pass military inspection.
When it was time to settle up, I asked what I owed for his services. “Whatever you think it was worth,” he said. Surprised, I asked the question again but got the same answer.
It had been years since I’d been to this shop, but I recalled its prices and figured they hadn’t changed much. Inspired by this man’s trust, I paid him a premium. Our circuitous path to price discovery got me thinking.
A cynic, Oscar Wilde said, is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. This most uncynical man demands no price for payment, only value for consideration. I think I understand why. Transactions in the material economy may be zero-sum—a dollar in his pocket was one out of mine—but ones in the spiritual economy never are. The abundant trust he placed in me didn’t diminish his stores of unperishable virtue.
How man sees himself and the world around him largely depends on which part, matter or spirit, he identifies as the seat of his authentic self. By transacting in values, the laborer chose the better part. As with shoes, I suddenly realized, so with people.
It’s fitting that a boot polisher would be the one great-souled enough to help me make this connection. He surely knows how life’s curb spares nobody, but that no matter how abraded our exterior, we’re never without intrinsic value. Once the imperfections are lovingly made right, interior magnificence is visible, and we are again glorious bodies.
A typical transaction in a capitalist economy this wasn't. Not only did the vendor insist that the buyer pay only what the buyer thought "it was worth", but the shoeshine man told the customer to do so
after he rendered the service, i.e., after he had lost all negotiating leverage. He had made himself vulnerable and had to trust the customer to do the right thing. The latter did, and for just a moment the curtains of the world parted, and we caught a glimpse of the divine.
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