The Person-to-Person Equation

Because human judgement is so variable, and because human problems are so complex, organized effort has to come somewhat within definable categories, within certain procedures. All this, in a measure is somewhat necessarily so.

But we should not let the organizing of services isolate us from a sense of personal responsibility when we find a personal need. Routine is all right in routine matters, and theory is all right when it works; but when a real person with a real problem presents himself, when the need is evident and obvious, and when we personally have been appealed to, we can scarcely quiet conscience by referring to a rule that says under such and such a section you cannot qualify.

Suppose a man is ill. Suppose a child is lost. Suppose someone is injured and needs help from the first person who appears. There are times when, in a personal way, we have to set aside the excluding and qualifying clauses and simply do something⎯even if it isn’t routine, even if it isn’t convenient, even if it is after hours.

In order to avoid personal appeals people are sometimes heard to say, “If I do this for you, I’ll have to do it for everyone else”⎯giving this as the reason for not doing something for someone who needs it now! With all respect to precedents and procedures and not presuming to set any of them aside, yet there is this to be considered: If we couldn’t do for anyone what we couldn’t do for everyone, we couldn’t do anything for anyone.

Institutions and organizations must necessarily regulate themselves and define their functions⎯but the Parable of the Good Samaritan would still seem to suggest the need for the person-to-person equation⎯would still seem to suggest that we should do what we can do for someone when the nee is now, when the problem is presented.

If we couldn’t do anything for anyone that we couldn’t do for everyone, we could never do anything for anyone.