Gratitude

How do you express your gratitude?

This prompt raises an interesting point for me. Not in how I express my gratitude, because I think I do it with sincere feeling, but the whole idea of why we do things for other people.

In my view of history (and so this might just be from my perspective), people used to do a lot of things for others just because that behavior existed as part of the social construct. I hold a door open for someone, or take their empty shopping cart from their car to the cart return area, or…a myriad of possibilities. You would approach people because of their work (a counter at some company) and they would grant your request partially because it’s their job, but also because they were helping someone. How often have you seen someone go above and beyond?

But it seems something’s changed in the last few years. Of course, people still do random acts of kindness for others and chivalry is not dead. But I see a great deal of—what is it? Laziness? Selfishness? Uncaring attitudes? That “You Want It When?” sign withe the cartoon guy laughing seems to have changed from a joke to a Commandment. Acquiescence to a request often has to be preceded and/or punctuated by a heavy aggrieved sigh. And let’s not even start on the topic of customer service, where there is a firewall of automation stopping me from talking to a “Person! Agent! Representative!” How many times have a I looked at a website and found that there is no way to contact a human?

People are not evil. Once I had someone speak very nicely to me and excuse himself even though he was wearing a “Gun-Totin’ Patriot” type T-shirt. Maybe he didn’t realize I was a liberal socialist. Or maybe it didn’t matter because, in the moment, we were both humans trying to get down a shopping aisle in two different directions, and decided to share the road. In this age of polarization, we have to realize that the meat puppets around us are all human and share the same DNA as us, and treat them like it, regardless of gender, gender identity, race, religion, national origin, or immigration status. (And all the other classifications that people seem intent on using to inflame hate these days.)

Thoughts? Let me know, and please like and follow (as we inch closer to 100 follows! Thank you!)