I've been meaning to write for a while but every time I sit down to write one of two things happen; A. it's a political issue I want to comment about (better suited to social media) or B. it's too personal of an account on the inner workings of my 20-year-old-that-thinks-he's-full-of-wisdom mind. Point being, I haven't blogged in a really long time.
I've learned that the concept of society is a strictly political one. When we learned to build and organize and realized we had too many mouths to feed to just roam around from land to land, we settled down, figured out how to coexist with other humans trying to fend for themselves, and began to mate within, and then finally, outside of our settled communities.
So then, collections of people didn't really interact with other collections of people, until quite recently. This concept of "be kind to your neighbors" is also a fairly new concept (one that, as Joanne Reynolds, one of my high school English teachers, will tell you is preached in every single major religious text). Obviously, we are still grappling with the application of this universal teaching, because, y'know, bombs are still being dropped from the sky over unsuspecting civilians.
But we'd like to think that on a person-to-person basis, we've pretty much realized our potential to feign decency around strangers. Coexistence hinges on the fact that we remain peaceful. So we say hi to that neighbor whose dog barked at us furiously, or hold the door for that History professor we despise, or smile and nod when a family member comes out in the potential benefits of conversion therapy (there I go again with the politics!!!).
But as I was talking to a kind friend of mine named Zahra about a thing one of my friends did, I kept trying to coherently argue that it is not anyone's responsibility to feel for another person. I.e. if Person A hurts me, and it hurts like hell, I can curse them and imagine their falling off a cliff and throw a tantrum- these are all within my rights as a response to being hurt. But Person A could be none the wiser, or worse (gasp!), actually know the pain they've caused and simply not have it affect them. And then would I be right in demanding that they care? My friends can tell me they are horrible and ask how they could not care, but can they really ask Person A to care?
And this ties in to politeness in this manner: empathy and sympathy are human emotions. We feel them for people who've shared our experiences, people who we love but don't identify with, hell- strangers even. But how can anyone, or any collection of people, demand what topics to empathize with? In example above, I was hurt, but what me and my friends describe as the worst behavior possible could just be cataloged as neutral in their book. So what I'm saying is, it's relative.
I'll go into another example that's more toned down on the emotional heaviness i.e. no one gets hurt. I was very stressed one day coming out of a grocery store because I had like 5 million other things to do, and a man held the door open for me and another lady. Neither one of us thanked him. He called out, pretty irritated, "A THANK YOU WOULD BE NICE."
And you know what, it would be. We don't have to hold doors open for each other, so it feels nice to be appreciated for doing the act. Thanking people reaffirms the notion that good deeds are appreciated and desired, striving to create the world a better place one interaction at a time.
But I question the anger we feel when a good deed goes unnoticed. Like, did it really affect that man that no one thanked him? Was that anger not another negative added to the world? Do we simply hold doors for people due to social desirability, to get pats on the back for being polite?
I should have thanked him, no doubt. It was the decent thing to do. But I missed out on an opportunity to be polite, to be nice. That shouldn't mean I get yelled at. That lady who neither the man nor I know could be a decent person and she could be a vile person, but she didn't deserve to be made to feel bad because she didn't say "thank you."
And no, this post is not me airing out my frustrations on one man who was probably also having a bad day and the lack of courtesy in my behavior was just the last thing that went wrong. Or maybe he's just angry. Or maybe that wasn't even anger.
The point is that we expect human decency. We operate under the assumption that if my friend is in the process of being wronged, the person wronging them is a decent human that recognizes when they cause pain and feel some amount of guilt for doing so. But who says they are a decent person? What even is a decent person?
So Imma leave ya'll with this. Be polite. Be the nicest person you can possibly be. Show up for your family, friends, strangers. But don't do it with the expectation of recognition. First of all, you will feel bad when someone doesn't recognize it. More importantly, you're reducing the good to just a ploy to make yourself feel better.
But what do i know, like i said, I'm only 20. But food for thought, yeah?
Be kind. Spread light. (Feed me.)
Wahid out.
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