The latest display of rage (in this case, a fed-up flight attendant) ought to stop us all in our tracks. The picture of a you-have-tap-danced-on-my-last-nerve flight attendant hurling invective over the PA system at yet another rude (not to mention uncomfortable, cramped, stressed) passenger, then escaping via the emergency evacuation chute is kind of funny. I’m sure it will be fodder for the joke writers at every late night talk show.
While it’s easy to smirk, we need to think beyond this single incident and consider that it’s only one of many acts of rudeness and incivility that occur every day. Life is more stressful, more crowded, more noisy than it was even ten years ago. Put a lousy economy on top of that, and you have a recipe for rudeness and, as Mary J. Blige so aptly describes it, hateration.
All this hateration causes pain. It hurts the person who reacts to rudeness with rudeness and it taints everyone who has to witness it. Hateration benefits no one, not even the hater. So what’s a society to do?
Instead of instituting a Politeness Police, let’s simply agree to monitor our own behavior. Let’s insert a clause into our individual social contracts that clearly defines how we will conduct ourselves – not just when things are going well, but when we’re thrust into stressful situations rife with potential rudeness and conflict.
Let’s choose civility. Let’s choose kindness. Let’s take the high road, shall we? Because the low road is awfully crowded.
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