Do to a recent disappointment I had I am contemplating what it is we owe one another, both friends and strangers. These things fall under the general rubric of "Common Courtesy". When you inadvertently bump into a person, friend or stranger, you say 'excuse me' or something to that effect, and when it happens to you, or you see it happen to another, and the person doing the bumping goes on his way without a word yo say "How Rude". Likewise, you do not let the door you just passed through slam shut on those behind you, barge into the front of a checkout line, or talk loudly, or use a cell phone, in a movie. We owe and are owed these things not because the law says we are, or because the Bible says so, but as a member of a polite society, they are demanded.
Another burden common courtesy puts upon us is to do what we tell others that we will do, or explain why we did not. We never know the importance another puts upon our words, we can only know the importance that we put on them. I am reminded of a relations seminars I watch some while back, the lecture picked up a pebble saying to the man as he dropped it, "This is what your words were meant by you", then he picks up a large stone and as he dropped it said, "This is what your words mean to her."
This analogy is applicable to many of the things in which we go about our daily intercourse with family, friends, and strangers. Just because you put little importance on what you tell another you will do does not mean that they put the same importance upon it.
A friend just reneged on a trivial matter in which he said that he would do, and when I complained about it he responded, "... don't have to report to you." No, he doesn't, but common courtesy put a burden on him to explain why he did not do what he said he would do. It was a pebble to him, but a bolder to me.
