It’s weird when the only people you see outside your immediate family on any given day are largely strangers. We end up hanging a lot of hopes on those small moments of interaction and, hard as it is to believe, they can often briefly define our mood.
Andy goes running every day and often comes home bemoaning the people he has encountered. Nothing gets his blood boiling quite like the stranger who didn't return his smile or hello. The only real swearing he does takes place behind the wheel of the car or, apparently, during a time of social distancing.
This period has so far revealed the true character in a lot of people. We are seeing the best of people but also the very worst of people.
As the saying goes, adversity does not build character, it reveals it.
On our walk yesterday we had to navigate a middle aged couple who made absolutely no attempt to let us all pass them safely, forcing us to walk in the road. This isn’t all that uncommon. We also had to tramp the kids through a verge of thigh-high nettles to avoid the surly teenagers on their bikes who had stopped to conduct a vital phone call on a narrow footpath and were not going to move.
Then there’s the people who look through you as you make way for them to pass you at a safe distance - no thank you, no small smile of acknowledgement, and often not even any eye contact.
Some people don’t seem to grasp that in our caution we are trying to keep all of us safe - them and us. They can’t even summon the energy to look up.
Why haven’t some people got basic manners, more self awareness, a bit of common sense?
If this period of lockdown doesn’t make us reflect on our collective vulnerability as humans, if it doesn’t really drive home that we’re all in this together, if it doesn’t make people think that maybe now is the time to try to do their best by someone else, what will? If this is a test then a lot of people are failing.
The roads round us are getting busier, the groups of people sitting together by the canal gradually growing larger, the numbers of people hanging around on the high street having a quick chat faintly ridiculous.
Yet there is the flip side to all these tales of self-obsessed idiots in our midst. The shy lad who brought himself to say thank you as we let him pass, the older couple who crossed the road to walk where there was no pavement when they saw the kids trundling towards them. The pensioner from church who emails me every week to check we’re ok.
When you see the good in society it reinforces why we’re hard on the kids over their behaviour and manners. They may be feral little beasts but when push comes to shove they know how to behave. We’re really hot on their manners, on their consideration of others, of teaching them not to be selfish - which is impossible as children have almost no understanding of selflessness as a concept.
Whatever, we value manners very heavily and pull Henry and Bella up on that all the time. We even sign please and thank you to Xander, repeating those more than any other common words.
I’m forever berating Henry for powering along the pavement with his head down on the way to school, yelling ‘ANTICIPATE!’ like a mad woman as he forces people coming towards him to stop or do a little dance while he weaves his way along, oblivious.
I want our kids to be the ones that move for other people to pass, who say thank you when someone shows them the same courtesy. If only they had a consistency of role model in the adults they see.
I desperately hope that one of the good things that comes out of this pandemic is that it gives our children’s generation a fresh - a refreshed - view of their place in society. I hope they will be a less selfish generation than ours, a kinder, more open-minded, less greedy generation. One with a greater sense of community and generosity of spirit.
God knows we need it.
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