The opinions stated in this article are solely those of the author. 

Sitting at a restaurant counter last week, I overheard a middle-aged man complain to his server that he was “disgusted with the world.”

His explanation – of which I am full of doubt – was that a total stranger had passed by his seat at another restaurant and spit in his coffee.

“Can you imagine?” he said. “Stuff like that never used to happen, but now – well, you can’t trust anyone anymore. Not anyone!”

He looked at me. “I’m right, aren’t I?” he said. “Can you find any good people anymore?”

It was a ridiculous question. And my answer was simple.

“Of course, I can find good people. What happened to you” (if it really did) “was a one-off. There have always been jerks, but they are certainly not the majority.”

He probably brushed me off as an idealist, some naïve Pollyanna who wasn’t in touch with the times. But several days later, I pondered the information in a newspaper advertisement for an insurance company. It began with a negative question “WHO CARES?” In response, the bottom portion of the advertisement, the question was answered.

Who cares?

How about 563,000 volunteer firefighters who risked their lives last year?

Or the 9.9 million people who delivered food after a disaster.

The list continued:

1.5 million volunteers who fed the hungry…4.7 million caregivers who comforted the elderly and disabled…6.8 million people who gave blood…150,000 people who sheltered the homeless…200 million people who gave to good causes through charitable donations.

As the ad concluded, “Every day millions of you are there to help one another because remarkable things happen when people care.”

Granted, we have strayed from former Pres. George Bush’s call to become united as a “kinder and gentler” nation. Too many Americans either ignore or even despise those who look or think differently than they do. But to paint the majority of Americans as evil and/or untrustworthy is delusional.

And we can solve problems by simply making commitments. As presidential contender, Adlai Stevenson said some 70 years ago, we have the power to make the world a desert or make the desert bloom.

Maybe the man at the restaurant counter actually experienced an idiot spitting in his coffee. But even if that were true, for every disgusting act like that there are hundreds of people in drive-thru lines at Starbucks who “pay it forward” and pay for a stranger’s coffee in the car behind them. 

Bryan Gray, a longtime Davis County resident, is a former school teacher and has been a columnist for more than 26 years in newspapers along the Wasatch Front.