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Just like any other day, I was ready to get home and crash. I made my way through the crowd to the metro, the music in my ear helping drown out the sounds of rush hour. I weaved through crowd and made my way to the escalators. The cold wind made its way past my coat and scarf, hitting my neck. The cold made it difficult to breathe so all I wanted was to make it to the bottom of the escalator.
I had to come to a halt because of a man that had stopped right before the right escalator.
Any other day, I wouldn’t have even registered this occurence and moved on but the frustrations of the weekend had been wearing down on me all day. I heard myself let out a frustrated sigh. As I walked around him, I saw a flash of white and on my way down the left escalator, a frustrated and angry thought made its way through the music and into the forefront of my brain.
“What an idiot! I can’t believe he stopped in the middle of the crowd at the head of the stairs to put in his iPod earphones!”
At the bottom of the escalator, as I turned left to head to the train, I saw the flash of white again. He was not holding earphones in his hand.
He was holding a cane.
He had stopped at the top of the escalator to unfold his cane to guide his way through the crowd so he, too, could go home.
In a rush, as I let the unnecessary drama, the fatigue and the insignificant 30-second delay get to me, I made a judgment call.
That judgment call and the image of the cane in his hand haunted me all night.
We’re all rushing to get somewhere.
Let’s not rush through humanity, leaving civilization, consideration and courtesy behind.
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Comments
01.08.10
Good point.
I have a saying that helps me deal with frustrations in life:
"When someone does something that pisses you off, chances are they didn't do it on purpose".
I'm human, so I don't always remember this rule. But it helps.
01.08.10
Excellent excellent excellent post. I hope everyone reads this. I feel like people are getting angrier and angrier every day over stupid things like someone walking too slow or driving too slow. I'm not pointing fingers. I find this happens to me, too. And I think a lot of it has to do with the pace of our world... everything has to happen so fast, all the time. That's one of the major negative side effects of the internet, in my opinion... we've become so accustomed to instant gratification that we've lost all sense of patience and in the process overlook things such as common courtesy. I wish we could take a collective deep breath and reevaluate priorities in this world. What if we all paused to take a deep breath and smile every time we found ourselves getting angry or frustrated?? I'd love to live in a world like that.
01.08.10
Jordan, thanks for writing this. I see myself doing this a lot and it haunts me too. Part of the remedy has to be anger management, but another part is definitely pulling ourselves away from our own ambiguous sense of selfishness and recognizing that we're all human.
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01.08.10
@Scott, that's a great saying!
@Katie, I agree. Instant gratification is definitely an issue and we can't separate ourselves from the online world to live in the real world sometimes.
@Ryan, the good thing is, I calm down really quickly and don't get really angry but that feeling shouldn't be there in the first place.
01.08.10
@Jordan: Sounds like you're on the right track. Recognizing that it's a problem means that you're already ahead of most people.
01.08.10
I think that these rash judgments are what make us human sometimes--we all make mistakes. So, perhaps the other side of this is that if you ever find yourself the object of someone's misplaced anger and impatience, let it go. We can all be cruel, and we can all be forgiving.
Thanks for this post.
01.08.10
@Ryan, I'm certainly trying.
@Holly, Thanks! And I agree...life is too short to get caught up on the fleeting/misplaced anger and frustrations.
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