The most amazing thing happened to me the other day! I was in my car, leaving a parking lot. It was a loop parking lot, only one way in, which is also the way out.
As I was exiting the lot, a car was pulling out of a space near the entrance, so I stopped and let them out. As they pulled away, a large SUV nosed into the just-vacated space, but the driver stopped suddenly. He looked over at me, his eyes got big and his mouth made an “oh.” He pointed at me, then pointed to the parking space, as if to say, “sorry, were you waiting for this space?” I was surprised and delighted. This driver, bigger than me though he was, was going to yield to me if I laid claim to this space. Amazing. So I smiled my most dazzling smile and shook my head “no.”
A simple act of social awareness, of thinking beyond one’s self. Why has graciousness fallen from fashion? And how do we get it back?
2 comments:
Graciousness fell by the wayside when expediency became the new credo. We're all moving so fast to get as much done in our day as possible, that we don't take the time for the "niceties" that were expected and common in the past.
you know, Ginny, the thing is, that act of graciousness took all of thirty seconds of that man's time, and frankly, it made my day. I think part of it is we've become SOOO narcissistic, no one sees value in being nice. It's considered weak. We've got a lot of work to do to fix this.
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