Black Friday, Cyber Monday….tis the season, to buy? A video of people fleeing a a mall shooting in San Jose California* on Black Friday gave me a sense of unease. The videographer was running and and eventually found shelter. I scanned he comments, I saw many expressed my thought. Why didn’t anyone stop to help the elderly man with a walker; all we saw were about4 seconds of people running by him. Maybe someone eventually helped? Would you have stopped to help the elderly man?
I hope that I would. If panic adrenalin didn’t give me the strength to lift and carry, would I have thought fast enough to use clothing to pull him in tandem as I ran? Maybe people offered and were shooed away. What would you do?
As we approach Cyber Monday, let’s talk about virtual. What’s your on line presence? People can be mean. Things they would normally not say to someone’s face becomes vitriolic in comments. But, you know, it’s cyber. Sure, maybe it is bots making awful comments, which is a more comforting thought than people being vile. Maybe the humanity in us has to find excuses for poor behavior?
You can’t legislate kindness! Yet, consider what would happen if there were a vote to legislate kindness, would it pass?
Would we put disclaimers around it. You have to be kind as long as someone doesn’t <insert conditions here.> Who decides what those disclaimers are and more importantly, if everyone has to be kind, is there a boundary, a condition to be imposed? We’re allegedly in the buy season; that supposedly, gift giving and receiving or precursors of happiness and joy. Yet, what does the giving and receiving of kindness cost? An extra minute to give strangers directions? An extra tap so someone can get on the subway? In a world where you can be anything, can you be kind?
*”We can say for a matter of fact that this was not unsuspected shoppers that were targeted, this was an isolated incident with two individuals, and unfortunately two others were injured,” says Sgt. Jorge Garibay, with the San Jose Police Department.
Balancing on Unstable Surfaces 