We're Too Old to Be Asshats

Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Even “nice” Oregonians can be utter and complete asshats

Eugene is about as blue as you can get in this state, with some sprinklings of Trump voters. I have no idea who left the attached on my windshield, but it was a lesson in assumptions on the part of the compulsive policer who left it.

I was trying to find a parking space in downtown. I was on a tight schedule and had already been around the block several times and the lots were full. I was able to nestle into what was left of a regular parking space, made nearly impossible by the poor parking of the people who got there well before me. I worked with what I had.

BTW I am an expert parallel parker without help from my car. I was, apparently, inches over a line.

In other words, I got stuck with what was left as a result of poor decision- making of the folks who had parked prior to my arrival.

And I’m the one who got the above note.

In every aspect of life it is SO very easy to make these kinds of asinine, asshat assumptions simply because we can’t see the whole picture. This happens in relationships, business, everywhere.

We make assumptions about the front line worker when the policies they’re forced to enforce were made by the asshats over their heads. We make assumptions about drivers who are speeding, not knowing that they have an infant who has turned blue in the front seat and they are rushing to the ER.

We make assumptions about the person who is having a meltdown, whose wife just got diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer and he had just been let go at his job.

We make assumptions about everyone all the time, and my hand is way up here, which MAKES US THE ASSHAT.

This was a fine reminder that we know nothing. NOTHING. Not really. We can’t possibly know a situation in full, but we feel compelled to police others.

We ourselves need the policing. I mean, who walks around downtown with those notes ONLY to leave them on people’s windshields? GET A LIFE.

I didn’t take this personally. I recognize that in the “nice” state there are people perfectly willing to unkindly police strangers.

Photo by m on Unsplash

If someone has parked across two spaces, you and I don’t know that when the person got there, someone ELSE had taken two spaces and that was all that was left. People who have to park an RV in lots do just that- and that skews the parking for everyone else.

Have a little grace, for crying out loud.

Don’t do this. Makes us the asshat.

That said, this is a mini-window on who we are.

When the politically correct movement swelled into a tsunami of policing everyone for every damned thing that anyone ever felt was offensive, that’s just one reason we are where we are now with such a profoundly awful backlash.

Like so many things, it began with all good intentions.

Then sadly it morphed into a weapon for anyone with a beef about just about anything. As a writer I could give endless examples but won’t here, because if I do, I’ll just get hateful comments, which underscores my point.

So let’s get back to the ugly little note about being a shithead. Here in the “nice” state, where people let you into traffic, open the door for you and truly are far nicer than a lot of places I’ve lived, there’s still plenty of inappropriate policing of others to be nicer.

Bullying me is no way to motivate people to do better. If anything it makes me want to back up really hard into someone’s bumper. Which is, again, where we are as a nation.

We have zero right to police other people. Let’s police ourselves first.

Even better, let’s leave some love lying around for people to pick up instead. Buy the next person in line their coffee. Give your neighbor a loaf of sourdough. Doesn’t matter.

We’re either adding value to or sucking energy from the Universe at any time.

When the urge to police someone else rises in me, it invites me to ask what on earth makes me feel as though I have the right to try to control anyone else’s behavior?

Shy of preventing a disaster or protecting someone from being attacked or other similar interventions, we don’t.

Such pettiness just adds to an already anxious, terrified and angry world, making it very hard to play.

Let’s choose instead, in this increasingly difficult world, to add to what heals.

Let’s be kinder. Let’s be gracious. Let’s play.

Photo by Ante Gudelj on Unsplash

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