Is it my imagination or has impatience run rampant? If it’s not some lady running a shopping cart up my you know what, at the grocery store checkout line, it’s some dude rushing another guy out of his parking spot at the hardware store.
Everybody’s in a hurry these days, and common courtesy seems to have gone with the wind. I just can’t.
Are people ruder than they used to be? Have we taken “looking out for number one,” way too far?
I understand that we should all “take care.” We should all learn to love ourselves, such as the Bible says, as we love our neighbor. But loving yourself more than your neighbor, then that’s taking the precept too far, I believe.
A few weeks ago, I literally fell in a crosswalk because an impatient driver, stopped to wait for me to cross frantically waving like a flag in the wind, to get me to hurry up. So flustered, I trotted toward the crossing line and tripped over my own rubber soled shoes.
What’s wrong with this picture? I haven’t totally lost faith in people because of their impatience. That trip and fall incident was accompanied by my dropping my bank card at the crime scene. Don’t you know that a Good Samaritan turned it in at the grocery store customer service desk. I would not have dreamed of a more honest, caring and truly loving your neighbor type human being to have concluded that stunning experience.
It could’ve been worse. Don’t you know, it could always be worse?
I don’t know about you, but I feel rushed all the time, whether it’s spouses pushing each other to do something or another, or it’s just the speed of culture. Could you just “hold your horses,” a little bit?
Put the kettle on, and chill out. Mind you, I don’t think I’m a particularly slow person. In fact, my usual walking gait is by habit timed close to my fitness walking regime, which is kind of fast.
I’m also quick off the draw in business and technology, or so I’m told by more than a few professionals younger and savvier than am I. So, it is just a theory that this “hurry-up” culture is based purely on self-centered “me-centric” selfishness.
I’m pretty sure that the driver’s manual in every state of the United States restricts the use of sounding one’s horn to very purposeful things. And I’m equally sure that people are honking their horn out of impatience, not because they love Jesus. (Please know I’m not mocking Jesus, but to clarify, there used to be a bumper sticker, which said “honk if you love Jesus.”)
It’s just plain road rage if you honk your horn out of frustration with other driver’s reaction time. Typically, you will hear a honk if you delay a fraction of a second after the traffic light turns green or risk a rear-ending.
And forget the yellow light as a caution light or prepare-to-stop indication. If you don’t go through a yellow light, again you risk being rear-ended by the guy behind you who wants to get through the light.
Sensible driving calls for sounding your horn only to alert another driver with whom you might collide, i.e., the blind spot, or their temporary lack of attention to their surroundings, which include you in them.
“Hold on!” I know I’m not the only human being who takes five seconds to get her cards back in the right place in my wallet or hand bag before leaving the checkout line at the grocery store. Oh, my goodness you would think you were holding up a person late for an appointment at the White House, but it’s just one granny on her way to the next store on her list.
Leave it to a 19th century monarch to genially tell us all to “back off,” and save ourselves some stress. Supposedly it was the U.K.’s Queen Victoria who said “Let time slow down so that one breathes freedom and peace, making one forget the world and it’s sad turmoil.”