The world is changing.
I grew up in a world where we opened the door for an elderly person, a lady, or someone whose arms were full. When we asked someone for a favour, we made sure that it was repayed in kind. We imposed ourselves as little as possible on others, helped wash up at dinner, and gave our friends and family our full attention when we were with them.
In those days we knew that it was wrong to be a “gossip”. We kept our mouths closed when we had nothing good to say. We were generous when praise was warranted. We assumed that everyone else was as busy as we were, and we understood that we were not that close to the center of the universe.
“Please” and “Thank you” were a reflex back then. Courteous language was a currency that when traded, and saved, yielded tremendous returns. We tried very hard not to interrupt others when they were speaking, out of respect, and we tended to hear a lot more, as a result. Four letter words were avoided, not because were were puritans, but because we knew we could do better, and because we had a wider vocabulary.
Seldom were we late. Communication was not as casual back then either. When we got a message we called back right away. When we were invited to an event we RSVP’d. We were predictable and we were trustworthy.
These days that courtesy seems to be gone. The tragedy is that the rules and rituals by which we lived made us consider that other people had lives and hopes and struggles very similar to our own. Now we impose on others because we have lost touch with what it was to be polite.
Email and MSN, and Blackberry’s, and voicemail make my life easier everyday. But the role models for my daily interactions remain people like my mother, who sets a very very high standard for courtesy and caring, and Annette who has a very busy life and yet always makes time for her friends and family.
I have two teeneagers to raise. They find such dicussions irrelevant in their world of one line texts and multi-multi-multi tasking. Getting them to understand the importance of manners is sort of like trying to push an elephant through a funnel. The subject is huge and the focus is narrow. As Dilbert says “I guess that will be handy if you ever get a call from 1993″. Maybe I am becoming a relic.
It is not always easy to be polite.
One Response to “Manners, courtesy, consideratiom…WTF”
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Great post John! Really well written! Probably my favourite post.