Ode To Self 6

There are few things that betray us as the selfish bastards we all are as in the way we negotiate public space. I can think of two examples today. This morning, while I was getting ready to get off the bus, a rather upper class young woman was blocking my way while talking to her friend in that precious uptown dialect that upper class young women are so annoyingly gifted at. I politely said excuse me and she did move her generously proportioned backside but bumped me with it instead. When I told her that either sorry or excuse me works, she replied oh, that's okay. To avoid conflict I simply agreed with her then got off the bus. Later, in the Food Dollarama, also known as No Frills Supermarket, I reached across an older woman who appeared to be from a European country for the tinned tomatoes. Aware that her space might feel invaded, I smiled and said excuse me, then, "even when I'm being rude I try to be polite about it." I got rather dirty looks both from this woman and her presumed husband. As I walked away, I replied, "have a nice day, you friendly people." When I got on the bus, I had already rehearsed what I was going to say, if there was no seating space and the courtesy seats at the front, as usual, were occupied by useless able-bodied twenty-somethings. I was going to stand in front of some of them, my very heavy reusable shopping bag almost spilling over with groceries and my big golf umbrella in my other hand, and I was going to announce, "Grandpa needs to sit down. Now." I did not have to do that. There was a seat available just in front of the back exit. To the young man next to me entranced with his dear little phone, I said that I would take great care not to hit him with my bags. He did respond with a rather kind little smile. I think a lot of us just seem to believe, or to want to believe that we are the only ones present. There appears to be something threatening for a lot of people being out in public, anonymous among unfriendly or even hostile strangers. I've really come to think of the word trauma as kind of a useless catch-all. It has been turned by the mental health industry and the media into a designated label that stigmatizes those who aren't coping particularly well, even if it is really the same trauma that is affecting everyone. We all live, it seems, in a dazed, discombobulated state. We have not been able to successfully absorb or integrate the many huge changes that have come our way, and globalization has simply put this dynamic on steroids. We are for the most part people who don't really know who they are. We all seem to wander through life with just half a soul, if that. Mindless consumers that we have passively consented to being turned into, we simply try one product or service after another, be it food, drink, drug, exercise, fitness, relationships, lifestyle, entertainment, lame attempts towards spirituality, you name it. Anything that will fill that gaping hole where our soul is supposed to be. Having divested ourselves of all the cultural, religious and ethical traditions of our ancestral heritage, we live, most of us, in a grey, viscous fog. We are also, for the most part, horribly brainwashed by capitalism to compete against one another, all in the name of self-actualization, a bitter irony this, since most of us don't even have a rudimentary self to actualize. We need to get all this stuff back, somehow. We also need to figure out that we are all in this together and that the sooner we stop competing against each other, the sooner we start working and playing and interacting together, supporting and loving one another, then the sooner we are each going to acquire for ourselves a soul with a living, beating heart of flesh, and a workable sense of self that is not selfish, but giving and generous. We all rise together, but alone we fall.