How To Put Civility Back Into The World
The guy was angry with my wife.
She was driving down the road, reaching for my son’s sippy cup in the back seat. The stopper had come out of the lid and red juice was sloshing around the back of the car.
Admittedly not concentrating on the road, my wife swerved back in forth in her lane.
The man accelerated his car, passed her, and flipped her off as he went by.
At the next stoplight, my wife pulled up next to him and rolled down her window.
“Sorry,” she said, “but my son was spilling juice all over the back seat, and I was trying to grab his sippy cup.”
In that moment, my wife was no longer an unattentive driver.
She was a mom struggling to get control of a messy situation.
And when he looked at her in that context, as a mom struggling to get through her day, he softened his heart.
“No problem,” he smiled, “We’ve all been there.”
Why have we lost our civility?
What causes us to look at a person and feel contempt for him?
Anonymity
