Listen up, folks - there is a big fat thing in the world called "people wanting to be cool but who have no idea that it has nothing to do with being rude to others for a laugh or a high-5" and frankly it's old already.
We have become very much a populace which enjoys one-upping others, no matter who they are and no matter if we are related to them or not. The problem in the world is not only that we hate on each other for no apparent reason, but that we do so with such blatant and real fervor every time we disrespect anyone else that we believe that this is somehow the norm.
What I would like to know from anyone right now is why is it that anyone would believe that being rude to other people is okay and acceptable? Why is it that we are more primed to believe that we need to be rude to one another to get our point across to them? Why is it normal that this is okay? I will tell you why. When we think to ourselves how it is that wars are started, how it is that corporate takeovers happen, how it is that we hear about mega-divorces in the media, we know already that (1) it is possible that those two factions should not even have known each other, let alone partnered up, that (2) we are about to see people being nasty to one another and the entire world is going to see it, and (3) what we are seeing is 'normal' because it is normal in our society these days for people to feel like they have to hurt one another somehow and on some level so that any one of us can get ahead. This is the wrongest thing to think because it is the most untrue thing that anyone has ever believed about anyone else, including our very selves.
We are how these things happen. We are who makes the phone call not returned, the text ignored, the voicemail not listened to, the email not replied to, and most of all, the sense that in our care is the other person's trust and we have totally and absolutely, with that one thing that we did not do, fractured it somehow.
It is a common courtesy for people to stop with the dispensing of their own opinions of people who they do not know personally. It is a common courtesy for us to excuse ourselves when we have done something rude without meaning to. It is a common courtesy to tip our hat or apologize to others for behaving like morons. It is a common courtesy for us to know when we are being rude and a common courtesy to make it right when we know this is the truth. It is a common and tragic thing, though, that we know all of this but do nothing to remedy it because for the most part, we have, as a whole and on the whole, failed ourselves.
And it is time that it STOPPED.
Rudeness abounds...
People who know me for real know one thing about me and it is one thing that my photos do not announce to the world and that one thing is that I am a huge stickler for good manners, for behaving in a proper way, for not assuming that any one of us knows the truth of a thing without our first also finding out that we are or are not correct in our assumptions. We see this sort of behavior EVERYWHERE we go anymore, the assuming that we know better because we think we are that damned much better than everyone else and everywhere we go and everyone we meet seems to have this energy about them that tells them that their opinion is fact, that they had a good reason for being such a rude person, that they had a good enough reason for someone to do or not do what they knew was the most courteous thing to do. Sometimes it is unavoidable, the things that irritate us, like when our phones are in need of being replaced or when we are so busy with what we are doing that we cannot send a message back to anyone - and it happens to us all.
Yet, more often than not, human beings are inclined to go with whatever it is that allows us each to have to have the thought in our heads that a good decision must be made, one made from the brain and not from our emotions, and one that is tied to our being able to handle the thing that is at the end of it all, and the thing in this case that is at the end of it all is called courtesy. Courtesy is something that is a rare find these days. In my own line of work I am called upon to do the "mom thing" and teach grown people how to have manners. Yup, you read that correctly - among us are those who are our age (you know..ADULTS) who obviously and apparently did not pay attention to whoever it was who was the one in their lives who taught them, or maybe did not teach them how to behave properly in the company of other people. This is a sad fact that as a whole we have cultivated and have as the very truth of us all.
We have taken our own arrogance and our own egotistical ways and have enforced them onto the rest of the planet. We have taken it upon ourselves that we know better than everyone else, and in that inclination we have also made it so that who we are in the lives and eyes of others is this person who, if you are not in agreement with them, they will take offense and think you are against them somehow. Let it be well known now that no one is really "for" or "against" anyone else at all, and that this is yet another mechanism of the Ego self telling us each that somehow, while other people are important to us and to our lives, they are not as important as we are in the grander scheme of the All that is. While this is the truth that we have to be the priority in our own lives as far as happiness and peace and Love is concerned, where it is that we need to be these things stops when we feel like making others feel like they are not important at all is where we are wrong. And when we need to compare us to anyone at all is when this load of crap hits the fan.
I am likened to telling people that they have to think about how it was that they came to the idea that somehow they are more important than other people are. I am often times audibly heard telling someone that they "need to check yourself before you wreck yourself," and it is something that does not register to a whole lot of egotistical people and it does not register because by the time they are in my awareness, whether or not they showed up there by someone else's referral or they were sent to me by their manager or they were simply just meant to be part of my own consciousness....it does not matter...by the time they end up with me is about the time that the entirety of the world which they call their own has finally had just about enough of their crap. This crap that they like to place into other peoples' lives is the thing that anyone wants these people to get rid of. People actually love the people in their lives, even the crappy and arrogant ones, and it is because to a whole lot of us it is not the attitude but the reason behind it that is telling us more than any arrogant fool will believe we are told.
The truth is that there are people on the planet like me who have had about enough of people showing up at work or in the lives of other people period and believing that the only truth there is is their own. This is correct, because we all have our own truth and we should all live by that truth, but that is a truth that sometimes, when we are not as highly evolved as we want to believe ourselves to be, is lost on a whole lot of people. It is a beautiful thing to see a grown man who behaved like he was still a 19 year old kid come to the point that he knows he must change, that he knows he has to be the one to exact that change, and lo and behold - one day, this formerly boorish idiot evolved into the most attractive person on the planet to a whole lot more than only one person. This is called the evolution of man, literally.
The truth is that more times than not, it takes someone whose job it is literally to make it known to a person that they are behaving like a fool, that who they are has been so overblown by the person they think they want to be and who they try being before the work they need to do takes place that no matter what they do outside of someone teaching them and showing them not only where they are wrong but how to make it right, that they literally give off an energy that is like poison to the newly evolved but evolved and do not know they are evolved. They give off an energy that is like fleas on a dog in August, an energy that is like having eaten way too much and releasing gas into a crowded room and then having the audacity to blame it on the food and still not correct themselves with a simple little phrase that is "Pardon me..."
That is too difficult for some folks. It is too difficult for some folks to think about themselves in human being type terms, enough so that they would make an ass out of themselves than to have manners, believing that having manners is somehow a sign of weakness.
Having good manners is anything but a sign of weakness. It is a sign of personal, professional and social strength. It means that there is not a situation that you cannot deal with, even if you cannot deal with it, and that no matter what, it will be with grace and ease that you will get yourself out of a situation that might suck for everyone involved without certain social skills. This is the commonality between us all that is like lice in a kindergarten classroom. Either way, common courtesy is something that is most assuredly learned and is something that we all need to have a sense of, because having a sense of those things also opens the doors for us in other areas of life. It doesn't mean that you are not cool if you don't say "excuse me" when it is appropriate, and is, in fact, quite the opposite, and if you don't believe me try pushing past a very beautiful woman or a strikingly handsome man and be a boorish fool with them and then think about their reaction.
It will be one of disdain and they will be repelled by your energy. This is not my rule but that of the Universe.
This is not my rule but is one rule which I have not only stood by but am teaching other people to learn to live by - the idea that having manners is somehow uncool escapes my thinking. To believe that we are here but that only some of us are privileged enough to have the very nerve to think that there are some of us who are allowed to be rude to others and expect that they will not be rude right back just annoys me to no end.While it is within certain rights of freedom of expression in some countries, it is also our right and more - our human being type duty - to treat other people decently.
The very idea that we are allowed to be rude to whoever we want to be is one thing, but to go out into the world and actually live this way is the reason why so many of us believe that we are somehow above everyone else, and well, that is just another sort of thing that I teach that really, I never thought people would need to be taught. And I make no bones about it when I am schooling someone in a properly mannered sort of way. It makes for great writing.
Don't be so damned rude ! Yeesh !
I LOVE YOU ALL
ROX
Reverend Roxanne Cottell is the Kumu Hula and Creator of the Healing with Hula Program for Women and the Co-Founder of Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui - The Sisterhood of The Soul. She is a blogger, book author, choreographer , Public Speaker, Domestic Violence and Emotional Abuse Survivors Advocate and Spiritual Coach. If you would like to contact her for speaking engagements, Spiritual Consultations, or for anything else, please send an email to reverendroxie22@gmail.com
(c) Roxanne K. Cottell. All Rights Reserved
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