Judgements
We seem to have arrived at a place where, for many, the measure of a person’s worth and value to society is based on their net worth. And the proxies for this are in the titles we hold (and covet), the toys and trinkets we own and the clothes we wear.
We talk a good game, though. We talk about the value of hard work, the need to be happy, that love and caring trumps all.
But are we practicing accordingly? How do we acknowledge and treat the folks who come in to clean our offices every night? What about the entry level employees who’ve just joined our firms? How do we talk to and treat the folks who serve us our meals in our fancy restaurants? But we’re busy, we’ve got a lot on our minds, we don’t have time to waste.
Sure, but we do have that time when it comes to our peers and our higher ups and the folks with the nice big house down the street and that gal who just stepped out of her Bentley as we were waiting for the valet to bring our car around. There’s a difference there, both in how we think about, and what we say in, those situations.
One could, of course, argue that this has always been the case and, to some extent, that’s true. But we’re also in an environment where this feels far more pronounced - in a day and age that’s fueled by the internet, celebrity culture and social media. And the much discussed spread between the haves and have-nots has, I think, fueled a mental race where we feel we need to constantly be looking for ways to stay in and win that race, lest we fall behind. And these attitudes become, intentionally or not, the by-product.
It’s exasperating and it can be disheartening. Couple this with the state of our (global) politics and commerce, and the fact that we tend to lack obvious, relevant role models (that talk the talk and walk the walk), and the task to get past all of this looks bleak.
Perhaps, in the global view of things, that’s the case. But the thing I remind myself to remember is that we can only control what’s in front of us, what’s in our control. So, really, the thing to remember is that the first step to changing things, starts with us, as individuals.
We can start with the small things. An honest acknowledgement or a meaningful conversation. We can be more thoughtful to those around us. We can consciously address our perceptions and judgements, and begin to work through them.
My point is, we can’t look to others to make us feel better about the state of things. We can work towards improving the system. We can (and should) rail against its inadequacies. We should fight the injustice and inequality with everything we have.
But it still all starts with us, in the so-called little things. We need to practice how we want things to be in our own little microcosm, in our own personal universe. That’s what we can immediately control. That’s how we demonstrate what we believe.
My point is, if we’re disheartened by our role models, we certainly need to pick better ones, but also, perhaps, we need to become one ourselves.
