Respect and Common Decency–Lost?

So, my wife and I are crossing the road yesterday, at a beautiful park we frequent, and as we cross, there’s a motorcyclist and his girlfriend, and an SUV, coming toward us. We are IN the crosswalk. Yes, in it. In the middle of the road. The young biker guy and his girl both look to us.

And smile.

They never stopped, but continued to fly past–not speeding, just at the speed they were going–but never stopped.

The SUV also follow suit, but he never looked to us. Gee, he must not have seen us, walking across the middle of the road, some five or ten feet from him.

Is it just me, or does the world seem to getting just a wee bit more insensitive, more hurried, more rude?

Growing up, I never remembered such rudeness. People always moved aside when walking on sidewalks, even said “hello”; stopped at crosswalks to let others pass. When bikers (pedal, not motor) came up behind us, they alerted us to their approach with a shout or bell. Perhaps I’m just remembering the rosy-glassed view of my youth, but I’m not seeing a lot of that any more. What’s going on?

Is it that our offenders’ parents never passed on mutual respect and common decency, or, if taught, our offenders cast it aside of their own free will…or is it that many of today are simply so whacked out by short attention spans and workplace and Internet-based stressors that they no longer care about others? What is it and why?

I’m a metaphysical kinda guy, and I read and hear that when we expect people to be nice toward us, they will be. And I do believe that. You know, to a realistic point of application. So, am I, too, becoming affected by the same stressors, so I’m attracting all this rudeness? But whether or not I attracted it, shouldn’t each of our offenders had taken control of their own destiny and behaved in the proper manner?

They frigging SMILED at us as they cut us off.

SMILED.

Everyone seems to be in a hurry, and I fall prey to that same ill myself, at times. I’m always feeling I have too much to do and not enough time in which to do it, but I do my best to treat others with respect along the way. Maybe these are one-time occurrences with each of these incidents, and if so, then there are a LOT of singular instances of rudeness out there, and perhaps that speaks volumes of our times. And every time I encounter such an incident I try to reset my mind to “be nice” and hope that I’ll “fend off” any more such incidents. There’s a lot more analytical slicing and dicing that can be done here, philosophically and pragmatically, but I want to circumvent all that and ask that, rosy or not, naïve or not, that we all take a little more time to be polite to our fellow humans. Are the extra seconds really going to matter?

And in all fairness, I must relate that on our first pass over that same stretch of road, a guy in a truck did stop and let us pass, while we crossed. Thank you, sir!

Welcome to my first WordPress blog! My previous efforts of several years have been at Authors Den. My current topics of interest range from writing-related themes to UFOs. As earlier alluded, the philosophical and metaphysical. But I usually try to make it understandable and applicable to everyone. I try to blog at least once a week, but sometimes several times a week. Lately I’ve been lucky to do several times a month, but do stop by every now and then–and thank you for your time! My website is www.fpdorchak.com, for more fun facts and such about yours truly.

Frank