When Did Nice Go Out of Fashion?
I've been puzzling on this one for some time now and it was brought back into sharper focus for me just yesterday by an incident in a supermarket parking lot.
As I turned into the Von's parking lot which is huge because it is an outdoor shopping mall with capacity for a few hundred cars (I'm guessing), I could see the frail elderly gentleman with his walker, struggling to get across the great divide between his handicapped parking spot and the safety of the sidewalk area near the Von's entrance.
He was trying so very hard to go fast that he was shaking all over and I was afraid he would make himself fall right in the traffic lane. He was afraid of being run over by the passing cars who could not be bothered to stop for him, brushing by him with not very much room to spare. These people were terrifying the old man without giving even a heartbeat of consideration to his safety or the safety of the general public if things got really clogged waiting for the paramedics to arrive.
Who were the faces behind those steering wheels as they came up to and passed my own car window? They were mostly mothers with young children strapped into car seats. Sometimes, they were Dads with Mom in the front seat and kids in the back. These weren't exactly Osama bin Laden's latest recruits. But, from that old man's point of view, they may as well have been.
And what lesson did they just teach to those children in their care? Don't imagine for a second that the lesson was not permanently engraved on young psyches. Oh, it was. Sometimes, it was only the children who were looking through back windows or sticking heads out windows to see if the old man made it to safety. But Mom or Dad never saw a thing beyond their own need to hurry.
It took a very long time for that old man to cross that divide. I waited far enough back so he would not concern himself with trying to hurry up to please me. At last, a couple of teenage girls dressed up in today's fashion de rigeur with hair and make-up that looked a bit gothic crossed the same divide, that passenger safety zone crosswalk and they slowed to the old man's crawl, each one taking up a position on either side of him, keeping pace until he made it to safety.
Somebodys' mothers obviously taught them how to be human beings.
The old guy made it into the store and I finally was able to move on to the parking rows. Later, in the store, I saw him wheeling around in the motorchair that I'm sometimes forced to use on bad arthritis days. He looked happy, pleased to reach for his own items. He only had one more trip back across the divide waiting for him outside. Hopefully, store personnel would assist although I understand extremely well the need to say, "Oh, no," when asked if help out is needed. How do you admit you are not independent? How does a person do that? I haven't got there yet.
I came home, pushed the button to flip open the trunk, and struggled to lift bags out of the car and try to move as many as I could toward my front porch. Directly across the street from my house, two teenage boys and their Dad paused in shooting their basketball hoops to watch my struggle. I must admit, when I am exhausted and in pain, I do move more like a Rube Goldberg contraption than a normal human being.
I don't blame the boys for not rushing up to take my burdens and help me. Obviously, they'd never been allowed to know any better. I don't think I even blamed the Dad. Obviously, this was a generational thing.
I moved toward my front porch sending up little prayers of thanksgiving to the divine power that, so far, allows me to get to that porch under my own steam even if I am a bit rickety and shaky about doing it. I made it to my front door and moved on inside and felt bad for all the folks who have passed from being a valued human to being just a piece of wasted litter discarded along the side of Life's little highway.
Just one simple act of kindness made that frightened old man in the parking lot feel his existence mattered. To somebody.
Just knowing that somebody cared if I was struggling with a bag of groceries would have laid down a buffer between me and my own momentary despair.
Your simple act of kindness toward another might cost you less than a nanosecond of your lifetime, a smile freely given, an offer of a helping hand, a kind word... so very little that you could expend it and never even notice your own effort.
But the good that you did could mean a whole universe of care and making that other person feel they were still connected to the rest of the human race. You just never know.
Get human. Care. Show it. Be kind because we only go around once in this life cycle and what do you want your own existence to count for? Think about it.
As I turned into the Von's parking lot which is huge because it is an outdoor shopping mall with capacity for a few hundred cars (I'm guessing), I could see the frail elderly gentleman with his walker, struggling to get across the great divide between his handicapped parking spot and the safety of the sidewalk area near the Von's entrance.
He was trying so very hard to go fast that he was shaking all over and I was afraid he would make himself fall right in the traffic lane. He was afraid of being run over by the passing cars who could not be bothered to stop for him, brushing by him with not very much room to spare. These people were terrifying the old man without giving even a heartbeat of consideration to his safety or the safety of the general public if things got really clogged waiting for the paramedics to arrive.
Who were the faces behind those steering wheels as they came up to and passed my own car window? They were mostly mothers with young children strapped into car seats. Sometimes, they were Dads with Mom in the front seat and kids in the back. These weren't exactly Osama bin Laden's latest recruits. But, from that old man's point of view, they may as well have been.
And what lesson did they just teach to those children in their care? Don't imagine for a second that the lesson was not permanently engraved on young psyches. Oh, it was. Sometimes, it was only the children who were looking through back windows or sticking heads out windows to see if the old man made it to safety. But Mom or Dad never saw a thing beyond their own need to hurry.
It took a very long time for that old man to cross that divide. I waited far enough back so he would not concern himself with trying to hurry up to please me. At last, a couple of teenage girls dressed up in today's fashion de rigeur with hair and make-up that looked a bit gothic crossed the same divide, that passenger safety zone crosswalk and they slowed to the old man's crawl, each one taking up a position on either side of him, keeping pace until he made it to safety.
Somebodys' mothers obviously taught them how to be human beings.
The old guy made it into the store and I finally was able to move on to the parking rows. Later, in the store, I saw him wheeling around in the motorchair that I'm sometimes forced to use on bad arthritis days. He looked happy, pleased to reach for his own items. He only had one more trip back across the divide waiting for him outside. Hopefully, store personnel would assist although I understand extremely well the need to say, "Oh, no," when asked if help out is needed. How do you admit you are not independent? How does a person do that? I haven't got there yet.
I came home, pushed the button to flip open the trunk, and struggled to lift bags out of the car and try to move as many as I could toward my front porch. Directly across the street from my house, two teenage boys and their Dad paused in shooting their basketball hoops to watch my struggle. I must admit, when I am exhausted and in pain, I do move more like a Rube Goldberg contraption than a normal human being.
I don't blame the boys for not rushing up to take my burdens and help me. Obviously, they'd never been allowed to know any better. I don't think I even blamed the Dad. Obviously, this was a generational thing.
I moved toward my front porch sending up little prayers of thanksgiving to the divine power that, so far, allows me to get to that porch under my own steam even if I am a bit rickety and shaky about doing it. I made it to my front door and moved on inside and felt bad for all the folks who have passed from being a valued human to being just a piece of wasted litter discarded along the side of Life's little highway.
Just one simple act of kindness made that frightened old man in the parking lot feel his existence mattered. To somebody.
Just knowing that somebody cared if I was struggling with a bag of groceries would have laid down a buffer between me and my own momentary despair.
Your simple act of kindness toward another might cost you less than a nanosecond of your lifetime, a smile freely given, an offer of a helping hand, a kind word... so very little that you could expend it and never even notice your own effort.
But the good that you did could mean a whole universe of care and making that other person feel they were still connected to the rest of the human race. You just never know.
Get human. Care. Show it. Be kind because we only go around once in this life cycle and what do you want your own existence to count for? Think about it.
posted by uhuru1701 at 9:10 AM
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