The only “growing” in this life that requires absolutely no effort whatsoever is the act of growing-old, however, the act of growing-up is a choice.
That’s right folks, we all must eventually wrinkle, grey and wither away, but maturing along the way is totally optional.
Rudeness, crudeness and self-centered, blatant disregard for our fellowman should be something that never follows us into adulthood as we grow old, but for those who this shoe fits, beware because what goes-around comes-around and negative behavior has a way of attracting negative results.
To that end, I was at Costco yesterday and an elderly woman in a grey colored, four-door sedan was waiting patiently at the end of a parking aisle for another vehicle to back out. After the vehicle had successfully pulled out of the parking space, another small white compact car came quickly whipping around the corner doing a complete u-turn maneuver and sliced right in front of the grey car narrowly missing a collision and slid into the open parking space.
“HONK! HONK! HONK!!!!!” was the sound from the grey sedan in an effort to get the other drivers attention, but the female driver in the white car completely ignored the other driver. Dozens of people in the front of the store witnessed the incident and were in awe of such blatantly rude behavior from an adult woman with kids.
I must admit that my curiosity got the best of me, so I hung around and watched as the young female driver in the white car quickly exited her vehicle and retrieved her two kids who appeared to be under four-years-old and hurried into the store to the dismay of all the onlookers not once making eye contact or even acknowledging the elderly woman in the grey sedan.
As fate would have it, minutes later I was in line in the food court area with my kids and we just-so-happened to be standing right next to the white car lady.
“Hey Dad, that’s the mean lady that just stole that woman’s parking spot,” whispered my 11-year-old son Chance. “I guess she was just in a hurry to eat…” he said. We shared a quick little laugh then we overheard the cashier tell the woman that the pizza that she said she ordered 45 minutes ago was not ready because they didn’t have a ticket for it and she would have to wait. Oooops… 😉
“Now that’s Karma for you…” said little Chance. “Poetic justice…” I added.
I must admit that it never ceases to amaze me the type of callous, self-centered behavior that I see grown, adult people perpetrate against others. That love and kindness stuff that we try to teach to our kids and talk about at our churches, temples, synagogues, mosque, grand cathedrals and sacred sanctuaries is not meant to stay within the four walls. It’s meant to be lived-out in our day-to-day lives. Only a special kind of fool would dare model such flagrantly disrespectful behavior in front of our youth then ask in return that they behave otherwise. Hmmm…
I think that I speak for all of those who feel as I do when I say these words today, “GROW UP!” Love and Kindness starts with one person at a time, one day at a time, so please commit today to do your part and be the exception to the madness so we can Make it GREAT together.
GREAT WEEK!!!
