There's a Before and After in the Grocery Line[edit]
There’s a before and after in the grocery line. Before, I saw only the transaction: the beep of the scanner, the numbers on the screen, the quick exchange of coins. I’d be lost in my own head, rehearsing a lecture on Kant’s categorical imperative, barely registering the person behind the counter. My life was a series of grand ethical dilemmas—justice in the abstract, the weight of historical wrongs—but the small, daily ethics of this moment? I’d overlooked them, assuming they didn’t matter. The philosophers called this "moral particularity," but I’d treated it like a footnote.
Then came Tuesday. I was rushing, coffee cold in my hand, muttering about a deadline. The cashier—a woman with tired eyes and a name tag reading "Maria"—scanned my items. As she handed me my receipt, she paused. "You’ve got a little coffee on your chin," she said gently, not unkindly. "You might want to wipe that." I froze. It was such a tiny thing, yet it felt like a spotlight. She hadn’t just processed my purchase; she’d seen me. Not the professor, not the man with the deadline, but the man with coffee on his face.
The shift wasn’t dramatic. I didn’t quit my job or move to a monastery. But something cracked open. I realized that ethics isn’t only about saving the world or debating philosophy in a seminar—it’s in the quiet attention we give to the person right in front of us. The philosophers called this "the ethics of the everyday," but what does that actually mean for how we live? It means noticing the barista’s sigh when you order the same thing every morning. It means saying "thank you" to the bus driver who holds the door. It means seeing the invisible labor that keeps our world turning, one small interaction at a time.
Now, I walk slower. I make eye contact. I ask Maria how her shift’s going. I don’t do it to be "good"—I do it because I’ve learned that the most profound ethics are woven into the fabric of ordinary moments. I’m not a different person; I’m the same man, but I’ve learned to see the world as it is, not as I thought it should be. The big questions still matter, but they’re no longer separate from the small ones. They’re the same question, asked in a thousand different ways.
— Ray Bates, still asking questions