Love & Light

I’ve been thinking lately about the act of being kind and courteous, it stemmed from my encounter in a shop with a “Gentleman”, who was anything but as he took up an entire bank of seats that should have seated two or three people, forcing me to stand. At the time I was pretty disgruntled but didn’t feel like confronting him. I shared the experience on social media amongst friends and received some interesting reactions. Most agreed how rude this person was, some just laughed, but one thought that I should have approached him in a friendly and loving manner, how he may have been feeling lonely or overwhelmed and my loving approach may have helped him. Personally, I do not agree with this person, but this “love and light” approach got me thinking….

We do need to take into consideration that a person may be having a bad day and perhaps that is affecting their judgement. Not all acts of rudeness or unkindness are intentional, but they do hurt just the same. Moreover, I have experienced someone manipulating others to get what they want (attention usually) or stir up trouble and be let off the hook completely because they have an illness and they’re suffering, but is that really the right thing to do? How far do you allow someone to go before correcting them? Surely you cannot make allowances forever, at some point you must draw a line and say enough!?

But what if the person is a stranger, you don’t know what might be going on in their lives, they might be under huge strain and they might be in incredible pain, perhaps they’re not normally so inconsiderate. This is where intuition and observation are needed – in the experience I mentioned above it was very clear that the gentleman was not in pain and not suffering anything but boredom as he waited for his children who were in the changing rooms. He was very aware of what was going on around him and even picked up his hat at one point, before placing it back down on the seat next to him, despite having just looked right at me. In my opinion he was just plain inconsiderate. But let’s assume he was struggling that day, that his rudeness wasn’t a lack of manners, but rather a lack of awareness, would it still be right to let it go? Because I might have been in pain that day, I might have felt intimidated by this person or his behaviour and may not have felt confident enough to speak out. Is it still right that we forgive his lack of consideration?

I myself do not believe there is ever an excuse to intentionally behave in a way that could upset someone else, no matter what you’re going through. I have been through difficulties in my life, with relationships, with financial hardship, with illness, but throughout all of it I still tried my best to be a decent person, so why should I let someone else off the hook? I am very much on the side of “in a world where you can be anything, be kind” but that doesn’t mean we should allow others to treat us like doormats. A little respect from that gentleman the other day would have changed my whole attitude towards him and perhaps even brightened my day a little, wouldn’t that have been better than me feeling the need to write this blog?

Sadly we do live in a world with an awful lot of unkind and ignorant people, that cannot be disputed, and it is a real shame if we allow that to somehow taint us and change our behaviour, but still it is human to react, to have feelings. We cannot simply repeat the mantra “love and light” it’s unrealistic and unfair. Instead let’s treat everybody with and insist we ourselves are treated with RESPECT – let that be our new mantra!