I was sitting here at my desk at my mundane..non-interactive with people job, thinking what it is we did, or where we went wrong to turn people into these argumentative, unhappy, disassociated human beings.
Everywhere I turn there are people yelling, or giving each other dirty looks, or just not saying anything at all and dying a little inside or going a little mad. Motorists upset with pedestrians for crossing at a cross walk in front of them, because don't they know in how big of a hurry the motorist is to get to work and how busy and important that person is... A woman in Tim Horton's upset because there are 3 other people in line before her. Don't the underpaid and unappreciated staff know how important it is that she get her coffee quickly and perhaps before these other people because her job and time is more important than the 3 people in front of her.
And when did we give people this false sense of entitlement? When did we start assuming that we deserve peoples time, smiles, respect and kindness when all we do is take shots at one another...allow our bullshit to be foisted upon those around us. Those, there to assist us. And what have we given ourselves or taken away from ourselves that allows all of us (because at some point today, you may be guilty of the same, without being conscience of it) to demand that people we don't know go out of their way to be kind and nice and helpful to us.
We are creating a vicious cycle of, one person does to another who carries it to another, and its not in the good way it should be. It's mean and berating and hateful. Its not even said with the best of intentions anymore...its said out of malicious hatred, unwelcome and inappropriate disappointment and stress. Stress that we can do without, stress that doesn't even have to be stress if we would all just RELAX and take a breath and realize that we don not need to continue to treat each other this way....
Yet, we are all getting more angry, vicious, self righteous and self important...And yet none of us...not the rich CEO in the tower on Hollis or the dirt poor guy on Agricola has the right to treat another human being with such contempt. You are me, I am you, he is she, and they are us.
When we become smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinions and behaviors of others we lose common ground with the people around us. When we become preoccupied with only our thoughts and interests and intentions, than we become all of the people who infuriate us everyday.
This note isn't about everyone else, its not about all of those people who do this to each other and everyone of us everyday...ITS ABOUT US!! ITS ABOUT YOU!!! and ITS ABOUT ME! WE ARE THE ONES DOING THIS!!
Whether it be the injustices we incur by the bullshit rhetoric Politicians foist on us through the talking box in our living room, or the guy behind a counter selling you something you probably don't even need OR trying to get some simple assistance in a store from someone. We are all guilty of this...And It ends now, or at least I wish it would.
By Ashley Legere
