I recently attended a meeting wherein an adult man essentially lambasted an organization I belong to, indirectly so I couldn't really respond, and so quickly and forcefully that I couldn't get a word in edgewise. Trying to follow the conversation was like trying to capture lightning with my bare hands. This was a man who normally seems relatively competent, intelligent, and worthwhile, so it was rather shocking, frustrating, and painful to sit through the hour and a half of it. The kicker, of course, was that if he'd just done his job in the first place, he wouldn't have been so upset. I think he forgot about that part.
In any case, it got me thinking. Kids in general are told to "grow up" and taught respect and how to handle emotions maturely. The assumption was that as you got older, you got better and better at doing that until finally, when you were 18 or 21 or whatever, you were all grown up and mature and could be counted on to be an adult. That was my assumption growing up, that if I just worked hard enough and had enough patience, I could expect the people around me to act like adults.
I'm 26 now. Definitely an adult age. I'm not perfect, but I'm reasonably adult about things. I don't throw fits in public. I don't scream at people I'm upset with. I don't ignore work I don't like until it goes away. Yet around me? I see "adults" doing these things all the time. Is there some magical moment at 30 or so when it becomes okay to relapse to being 3?
The fact that a grown man of at least 30 years of age thought it was okay to stonewall a conversation with his personal ranting and frustrations (which were entirely unrelated to what we were trying to do) is just sickening. But we needn't even get that personal. You really need to only look at how people behave in rush hour traffic. We're taught to share in elementary school. We're taught to leave a large amount of space between ourselves and the next car, so if something happens we'll have time to avoid an accident. We're taught that red means stop, green means go, and yellow means to slow down. But what do we actually do in rush hour? We tailgate the next person, speed right through yellow lights, and overall scream, "Me first! Me me me!"
I only need to sit in a fast food restaurant for a short time during peak hours to find some adult, or worse, some parent, throwing what equates to a tantrum because they didn't get what they wanted as fast as they wanted it. A tantrum. Only with words, because adding verbal abuse to an already destructive behavior totally makes it better.
When did this become okay? Why do we just let people do this? Why isn't there a remedial school for adults who apparently didn't get proper societal training the first time? I mean, you all enforce these arbitrary rules of society I have to follow in order to be considered "sufficiently normal to be worthwhile," so is it too much to ask that you make everyone follow them?
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