It seems that noble qualities are valued in proportion to how publicly they are witnessed, and the more public, the more elevated, the more elevated, the more isolated.
The elderly woman was about to leave with her bagged items, and the conveyor belt was moving. I quickly reached into my wallet, took out a 10-spot, and touched the elderly woman on her arm. "Excuse me, ma'am, I think you dropped this."
There is a long history here that primes this moment -- a history of learning to identify and relate with life's essence regardless of its form. I haven't always been this sentimentally attuned.