People

I try to be a nice person, I really do. People make it awful hard sometimes.

People suck. Your average person is a decent enough fellow, but people … well, they suck.

The hardest part about getting along in society is trying to not treat a person like you’d treat people. As hard as it is sometimes, you have to treat every person as an individual. A completely new encounter.

…

I’m not explaining this right at all. No matter how many people blow right past you when you hold a door for them, never expect the next person to do the same. That 1 in 100 is maybe going to say ‘Thank You’ (rare these days, I know), but more importantly that 1 in 100 might think, just somewhere in the back of his mind, ‘Not everyone’s a dick.’ No matter how shitty a day you’ve had, no matter how pissed off you are that the guy in line ahead of you has 35 items in the fucking express lane you truly have to give your best effort to not lump everyone you meet in with the assholes.

In a way, this is very much the same phenomena as racism. I mean, racism is essentially expecting every member of a race to behave in a certain way. It is just as easy, or hell, even easier, to expect ever person to act the same as every other asshole you’ve ran across today.

I can’t honestly suggest that you treat every individual you encounter in the course of your day equally as if you’ve not encountered any number of assholes before but in the interest of civility I ask that you try. I try. I don’t always succeed and I often find myself being someone else’s asshole but I do try. I suggest you do the same.

You should not read this as a plea to everyone to be a doormat. I’m suggesting no such thing. If some asshole knocks into you in his hurry to get who-gives-a-shit-where and you feel the need to say, “Hey, fuckstick, watch where you’re walking.” by all means, let loose. All I’m suggesting is to not be the first asshole.

When I was in the police academy (yeah, there’s a bit of personal history) we were taught to always let the other guy dictate your behavior. Essentially, this means that you approach every encounter at a normal human polite level of behavior and you leave it to the other guy to decide whether or not you’ll get nicer or turn into a complete dick that just beat him senseless.

This really turned into a whole lot more of a ramble than I first intended.