Come on People now, smile on your brother

Yesterday my wife, my eleven year old son and I were almost in a head-on collision. A heavy duty truck, which looked like a cement mixer, belonging to an environmental service company was straddling the double yellow center line around a blind corner.  The look of shock on his face as we came around in our lane truly frightened me. His truck was too large, too heavy and moving too fast for him to maneuver at all. I swung my car to the curb on my side and came to a stop. He missed us by inches and …. just kept going. He just drove off. I took the next block and backtracked. I was extremely upset. I wanted this jackass to know what he almost did. I found him two blocks up about to make a right on the street I was on and as I passed him I yelled, cursed and told him to pull into the nearest parking lot. I know. It was a stupid thing to do. I was caught up in moment. The problem was my initial approach.

When he didn’t pull into the lot but instead taunted and goaded me with his passenger as he kept driving I decided to take this to his boss. I knew where their office was, we used to work in the same office park. I hope he received a written reprimand. I plan on following up in a few days, but that isn’t the point of this, it’s about how we treat each other, about our initial approach; our combined consciousness.

You see all of us enter our isolation booths and maneuver through our city avoiding all the jackasses on the road without ever realizing that those jackasses are approaching it the exact same way. Where did this sense of entitlement come from? When did all of us decide that our city, government, country, the world, all of existence was there to witness the “me show”? How do we figure we are the only important one?

Well with that attitude fell our cooperation, our compassion, our willingness to do what is right. What we adopted was the willingness to do what is right… for me. We disconnected from each other and started to take care of only ourselves. We drew lines, like we always have throughout history, in order to set ourselves against them to make it easier to excuse our behavior to ourselves. It’s competition; on the roads, in the office, in the community in the home. I’m all for doing the best you can and felling good about your accomplishments but when are we taking care of the most important aspect? I mean sure, we can be the best on the road, the best in the office, and the best in the community but if we’re not tending to our initial approach then all we end up with is a trophy shelf we admire alone. No one, I mean no one, wants to be taken advantage of; not on the road, in the office, in the community or in the home. So when did we flip and change to this me only approach? More importantly, why haven’t we noticed and done something about it?

We treat each other like enemies on the road, we have “road rage” which doesn’t come from congestion, it comes from our mindset. If they’re enemies then there are no holds barred. We drop polite society and “handle our business”. I call bullshit. I don’t want every other motorist on the road to treat me this way, then without being a massive hypocrite, so I cannot take advantage. I must follow the rules we have all agreed to.

We approach all of life in this same way. It’s been going for so long. I grew up in this mindset. I was a child in the 80’s during the “me generation” and boy isn’t that the truth. We were taught to take care of “No.1” and a bunch of other catchy slogans we would repeat to desensitize us from the usury we were being bred into. We did as every generation does, we improved upon the existing system. The improvement? “The Game”! It’s where I can act like a complete asshole and then excuse my behavior with the slogan “don’t hate the player, hate the game” which is tantamount to saying “don’t blame me, I’m no worse than everyone else”. That’s just great, lowest common denominator societal norms! How did we not notice we were circling the drain? How did we all adopt this philosophy so quickly? So easily? I mean it started in a subculture, as all things do, and went mainstream so quickly. Then came the “haters” and how we don’t have to listen to anyone, because haters are going to hate. What a giant system of self-delusion. That means I can be however I like because I only have to be better than those I judge to be less; which is to say I can do what I want because I can always judge people in such a way as to allow my bad behavior. Then, when I piss people off I don’t have to listen to them because I can just label them “haters” and dismiss them. It’s the recipe to complete deluded pseudo-happiness.  All of that outward manipulation causes us to live within ourselves and use our bodies like a robot. All the hate from the haters just hits the robot and doesn’t get through…. and neither does the love, neither does the happiness… nothing does.

So here we are; a world of people hiding within themselves and all of them missing out on life. It’s messy, you will cry, you will love and you will lose and all of it is the experience you were meant to have. There is no hiding from it, there is no broadcast delay in which you have a moment to factor your next move, nope. You act, you live, you learn, you grow, you give of yourself and you pass on. If you’re one of those lucky beautiful souls you touch the world with your honesty.

I am saddened by how many beautiful souls I meet who insist on remaining caterpillars.

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now
Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now
Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now

The Yougbloods