It’s 8:15 a.m., and I’m driving up MLK on my way to work.
Perhaps it’s the fact that everyone is half-awake on the roads, or people aren’t paying attention, or texting, or whatever, but when lights turn green, cars stay put. This is where I come in. Maybe I lack compassion or patience, but I’ve lived places where people know what green means. So, I lay into the car horn.
It’s effective, but also results in some drivers freaking out. But, why? They weren’t paying attention, and now they’re mad because I noticed the error of their ways.
I personally tend to apologize when I get honked at. It’s a reality check — I wasn’t paying attention, and someone else noticed. The horn is the communicating factor between two parties — the beeping individual, and the individual or individuals getting beeped at. The party on the receiving end obviously did something wrong, even if they didn’t realize it. This is where I think people start to get angry; cutting me off and getting sassy is not a way to handle your errors. Best way is to dust off your shoulders, apologize if necessary and move on.
This is just my morning commute. Crazy thing is, people are becoming more like cars on the road. You add commentary, or even a slight joke about something, and people take offense.
People are terrified of being wrong, and they’re scared of being considered a loser. They want to appear to know everything without having to study anything. It would be amazing if we didn’t have to learn things to know them, but that isn’t how life is. You have to lose a few games to know how amazing winning is. Competition leads to innovation, which leads to the expansion of knowledge. Without competition, the incentive to prove yourself vanishes into thin air.
What happens when we’ve eliminated losing to compensate for the others who did not exactly win, so as to not hurt their feelings? First place doesn’t seem as awesome as before, obviously. I mean, what good is first place when you did the best, but the guy who did half as well as you is also getting part of the prize? In an age of heavy political correctness and fear of offending others, we’re hurting ourselves by holding our tongues and lowering the bar standards. Competition relies on communication and observation — finding strong points and weaknesses of yourself and the people competing with you.
Perhaps it’s time to break the mold a bit. If someone says something that offends you about your work, be prepared to defend yourself. Don’t take it personally and let it destroy you. If it’s a valid point they’re making, take it into consideration. Pay attention to what others are communicating to you, and be prepared to back your story up if you disagree with them. If it’s something they said that was completely inappropriate, realize it’s not you with those crazy views, it’s them. As Fred Armisen posing as Joy Behar would say, “So what, who cares?”
Your greatest triumph might be as memorable as your most miserable failure, but without either of the two, you would have less perspective on life. Communication is necessary for the expansion of one’s ability to acquire knowledge. If knowledge is power, then why are we weakening ourselves by not communicating and being honest about how we feel about life?
