Etiquette gets a bad reputation for being complicated. Louis XIV famously used etiquette to exert power at the court of Versailles. The Victorians came up with rules and regulations about everything in order to keep upstarts and parvenus in their proper places. How many forks do you really need to eat dinner? Good Manners don’t have to be overdone. Good Manners can be simple.
So having a Manners Reality Check is a good idea, and National Simplicity Day is just as good a day as any other to have it. Because the internet is just full of holidays, someone decided to rebrand Henry David Thoreau’s birthday, July 12, by calling it National Simplicity Day. Thoreau left his mark for Simplicity in his famous Walden, or Life in the Woods, in which he advocated for a return to Nature and a celebration of the natural world’s purity. Of course it helps if you’d just rather not be around other people. Etiquetteer, far more sociable, considers Thoreau little more than a hermit. But in the Time of the Coronavirus, how many of us would be unwilling hermits were it not for Zoom? Thoreau would, no doubt, never get on line.
The best question to start a Manners Reality Check is Have I expressed kindness? If the answer is Yes (Etiquetteer hopes it is), then ask who received this kindness, and how. If the answer is No (and it might be No), follow up by asking why not, and where someone could have benefited more from your consideration. Benjamin Franklin, the Sage of America, a complex man who appeared simple, really did it best in his daily schedule. In the morning he would ask “What good shall I do this day?” and in the evening “What good have I done today?” It’s not a bad Design for Living.
In ordinary times, Etiquetteer would say that the simplest act of courtesy is a smile. But in the Time of the Coronavirus, the simplest act of coutesy obscures a smile. You know what that means: wear a mask!
Perfect Propriety can be condensed to this: the kind thing is the right thing to do. Considering the feelings of others is the right thing to do. And that means the fewest words are simplest, too. As Sidney Greenstreet so memorably said in The Maltese Falcon, “The simplest of farewells are best. Adieu.”