What bothers you and why?
“What bothers you and why?” suggests an incredibly long blog response. So many things! From that fly buzzing around me on a warm summer day (the one I mentioned to my Intro to Theatre students, that would set me off to help me understand the anger of a killer!!) to the threat of world destruction by climate change or nuclear war, there’s a lengthy list.
But, as Polonius says, “Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief,” without any accompanying flashy gestures. (To be honest, I never noticed the “tediousness” part of that before; it seems to follow Hamlet’s advice to the players…) Rather than provide you with a laundry list of what bothers me, I’ll limit myself to one item—but first, an additional revelation.
The revelation is that I have mellowed a great deal over the years. Oh, yes, I still get annoyed by stupid drivers and bad product instructions and people just being ridiculous. But my threshold is much higher. This was tested just the other day, when one truck ran a stop sign in front of me and then missed hitting the blonde path walker crossing the street who almost got picked off by another vehicle ignoring another stop sign halfway down the block. (The walker survived; she looked to be in pretty good shape and managed to dodge two collisions.) So it does take an accretion of annoyances to really bother me.
What does drive me mad, however, is hypocrisy. We see it constantly on display in the news; senator votes against the infrastructure bill, then claims victory when bringing the money back to his home district. A congressman attempts to enact homophobic legislation, and is then caught picking up a man in an airport. Someone you know says, “I’m not racist, but—” and the next thing they say is a racist statement. I’m starting to saw the air with my hands with wild gestures so I’ll stop with those examples, but I’m sure you get the idea.
My aunt once called me a hypocrite, and I was quite stunned. I asked her what she thought a hypocrite was, and she said, “A person who doesn’t go to church.” I tried to explain that, as a falling-away Catholic (I hadn’t reached the ground fully on that yet), I was not a hypocrite, but that those who went to church only for appearance’ sake or who felt they had to, were.
Incidentally, the Greek word hypokrites means actor, so in that particular case, it does fit me!
Let me know your responses and as always please follow and like!
MUSOFYR 