At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I wanted to ask what has happened to people treating each other with civility?
ci·vil·i·ty/səˈvilitē/Noun
I ask the question, because I hear a lot of people talk about this all the time, but its always in context of someone else; never themselves acting poorly. So I’m going to put it out there and say although I try to be a good guy, I must somehow be contributing to this phenomenon and I’m going to make a concerted effort to be more civil. I’m also going to try and be less judgmental of others who may be having a bad day or tough time and have forgotten the usual “Please” or “Thank you“.
These common courtesies include things as small as smiling at someone you make eye contact with or responding with a “Good Morning“. It includes things like opening doors for others and saying the customary “please” and “thank you“. However, this is by no means an exhaustive list nor are these rules temporarily suspended when you find yourself at an airport or jostling in line with your groceries.
One may assume that my motivation for this post was due to witnessing some bad behavior or perhaps as a mea culpa, but its been something I’ve been thinking about for quite awhile. I’d refrained because I didn’t want to come across as lecturing or sounding like a grumpy old man. Its for that reason too that I’m owning up to the problems I see in my community. Whether I think I contribute to this problem or am doing my best to change such bad behavior is irrelevant. As a member of my community – I have to own up to the problems I see around me and do my best to fix them. So I suppose, I’m saying to anyone who happens to read this, first do you agree and if you do – what are you going to do to try and reverse this phenomenon?
