kindness, selfishness, and immigration

I wondered today, as I made my way to the isle of where they hide the diaper rash ointment, why it is so hard for people to be nice to one another. It really is amazing that people will actually go out of their way to NOT be nice to someone; to not hold the door, let a person in front of them, etc…

Let me explain to you what I am talking about.

As I was pulling into the parking lot at the local grocery store, there was a young man with some sort of physical handicap pushing a long row of carts in from outside. I am sure you can all picture those guys who play “go-fer” after the carts.

Any way, as he struggled, and I mean really struggled with these carts, he finally approached the crosswalk. NOT ONE car stopped to allow him to cross. NOT ONE, until I pulled up. I watched as he tried to stop the momentum of the carts, and then get them going again as I waved him on. I still feel I should’ve gotten out and helped him.

Then, as I was walking to get in line to pay for my two carefully selected items, I noticed a man walking ahead of me, aimed at the same isle (as if we had a choice, there were only 2 open) with one item; a loaf of bread. That’s it. Just bread. A lady who was much close to the checkout clearly saw the man and hurried to the line, nearly falling on her face trying to get her first few items on the conveyer in an effort to secure her spot in line. The women literally had her cart heaping over with food.

Now, wouldn’t most sensible people have let the kid with the carts cross or the man with one item, go ahead of them? It isn’t as if waiting for an extra 30 seconds is going to have an impact on anything.

Seeing all this play out makes me wonder why we Americans have such a problem being nice to other people. We are raised in a society where people doing selfless acts are looked upon as heroes, so why isn’t random kindness more prevalent?

It is my opinion that we have such an inflated view of our own self importance, we deem giving up any amount of our time or energy, no matter how little it may be, to be wasteful. That is to say, we do not see other people as being nearly as important as our own selves.

Consider the women in line at the grocery store. She made the decision that her time was so much more valuable than anyone else’s, that she simply could not wait for the man with the bread to pay before she got her turn.

What causes this? Why are we Americans in such a hurry? Why this feeling of self importance?

I try, when I think about these things, to look at small situations – such as the grocery store – and imagine how that mental attitude affects the world on a more grand scale. I try to consider the problems of the world; the “hot button issues”; and how they relate to mental attitudes.

In this situation, as I think of how self-important that women must have felt, or those people in too big of a hurry to let the young man cross the street, I wonder if this is a prevailing attitude or if it just a small, isolated incident.

As I thought about the, the idea of self importance, the extreme nationalism of this nation kept creeping into the back of my head.

Is self importance, or the idea that you are more important than me, what leads to this nationalistic pride?

Think about all the time people say this is “their” country, “their” city, “ their” state. Think of the people pushing to make English the official language of the United States and backing it up with things like “if you are going to come to my country, you should have to speak my language.”

This is insane. This is sense of self importance, this sense of MY, MY, ME, ME, is out of control completely. Americans are getting all up-in-arms about immigration because people are coming across the border illegally, yet they never stop to consider how bad those people actually have it. All they can think is, “they should speak my language.”

Some might say it is a bit of a stretch linking immigration to American self-centeredness, but I think the roots of the immigration issue are found at the very heart of it. Too often we hear about the loss of “American” jobs, we hear people complain, saying things like “well, if I have to pay taxes so should they”. Could you imagine if the people of Mexico had the same attitude saying things like, “well if I have to live in poverty, so should Americans!” ?

I am convinced, in case the point has not been made, that a lot of the problem could be fixed if our way of thinking changed. If we stop, just for a minute, and think of other people first instead of ourselves, I think we might just realize that we should be doing more to help people than worrying about whether or not they can speak “our” language, pay taxes, or any of the sort.

I will get off my soap box hear with one last statement. You Americans, who worry so much about losing jobs to illegal immigration, tell me, when was the last time you worked a tobacco farm 10 hours for 5 dollars an hour? When was the last time you risked prison to do so?