Rising above other people’s garbage

You don’t have to look far for inspirational quotes on how other people’s bad manners, tempers and attitudes have, most of the time, nothing to do with us but their own unhappiness. Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram: the self-affirming quotes are being shared in abundance.

“The way people treat you says everything about them and nothing about you.”

“Confidence is silent, insecurities are loud.”

After an especially unpleasant encounter with a disgruntled flight attendant these quotes entered my head and made me wonder whether their existence is down to a newfound trend of blaming other people for their bad moods or if we are becoming less tolerant of tolerating other people’s crap. Whilst I would agree that, especially online, we have a tendency to hide behind the keyboard and blame anyone but ourselves for what has gone wrong, I would also have to say that I am becoming less and less accommodating to stinky attitudes and chips on the shoulders of my fellow human beings. I have always believed in treating others the way I would like to be treated and have been working overtime in my head to try hard to always see the other side, to imagine how my counterpart feels. Maybe it’s because of being overly emotionally tuned in that allows me to be more susceptible to taking the brunt of someone’s foul mood. Maybe I have one of those faces that implies that I would happily hold the other cheek if being slapped. Maybe I give off the impression that I won’t oppose and kick up a fuss if being treated like an afterthought. However, I am no longer interested to find out the reasons for this. I just simply won’t stand for it anymore. And neither should you. Every decent human being deserves basic levels of courtesy and respect. We may not like everyone and we don’t have to but who on earth do we think we are if we decide who to treat like shit and who we are nice to? Common decency and a basic level of emotional intelligence should prevent most of us from being total arseholes to others, just because we feel like it or because we have to make someone else feel bad because we are not happy. Get a grip people! The world is a hostile place, let’s not turn it into a playground of nastiness.