A Mean Country

 This morning I had to go to a couple of our data centers and do some repair work on some of our larger systems.  Afterward I decided to stop by the grocery store and pick up a few things on my way home for lunch.  This particular grocery store has the regular size shopping carts and they also have some smaller carts for when you only need a few items but you don't want to use one of the hand baskets.  Today I got one of the smaller carts and started to put groceries into it.  About half way through my shopping I decided that I needed to use the restroom, so I parked my partially filled cart outside the restroom and went in.

When I came out a couple of minutes later my cart was gone.  In it's place sitting on the floor was a hand basket with my items in it.  A woman wearing a massive parka was quickly moving away from me,  looking back at me over her shoulder, and  laughing.  She pointed at the cart she had taken from me, laughed like a rabid hyena, and quickly disappeared into the produce section while looking back at me over her shoulder to make sure I wasn't following.

At first I was angry that, instead of walking 20 feet to the cart storage area and getting an unused cart, she thought she would just take mine.  Instead of catching up to her and beaning her with a package of bacon, I decided just to let it go and finish my shopping.  I ran into her in the aisles a few times over the next five minutes.  On the third time I encountered her she pointed at the hand basket I was carrying and said "That looks heavy."  I momentarily reached for the bacon but decided against it, silently hoping to myself that something she was buying would give her two or three days of projectile diarrhea.  Karma has a way of keeping things in balance.

When I was in my car leaving the parking lot there were about half a dozen cars jockeying for the first spot in the exit line.  It was like a demolition derby.  Screaming, cursing, honking of horns, and shaking of fists.  One woman even got her kids into the act.  It was the first time in my life I've ever had a 7-year old flip me off and scream "Fuck off!" while hanging out of a car window.  I'm sure she'll go far in life.

On the drive home I realized that the grocery store incident wasn't the first time over the last few months that I had seen someone intentionally do something mean to another person.  After thinking about it for a few minutes I had remembered at least twenty instances of this, but I could only remember once when someone had done something kind for someone just because they though it would be a nice thing to do.  I remembered back to when I was young and it seemed like people back then would take every opportunity available to help others, whether it was just a mundane task or something that was very urgently needed.

So I guess my question would be "When did we become a mean country?"  Was it something that happened over a long period of time or is this something new?  Today people seem to generally be slightly depressed, tragically apathetic, and noticeably anxious.  Yesterday I had a family member tell me that she just doesn't want to do the holiday season this year.  My wife and I had the same discussion a few days ago.  We're not excited about it either and we'd be just as happy skipping ahead to January.

The part that really concerns me, though, is the overt meanness we see every day.  It's like being mean to another person is now considered ok.  Our country didn't use to behave this way.  Now it's apparently just "normal" behavior.  I'm not sure what has caused this.  Maybe it's the sensory overload most of us suffer as a result of technology making constant interaction with anyone and everyone seemingly mandatory.  Maybe it's anxiety over what the incoming Trump administration will dish out to (or onto) us over the next four years.  Maybe it's uncertainty that the founding principles of our country are under attack and democracy may not even survive.  Maybe it's just too many things coming at us at once and we just need a break from it all so we can catch our breath and find our place again.  

At any rate, I've decided to stop being mostly indifferent and try to be kind.  Very kind.  Still being kind in the face of adversity is going to be very difficult, but I'm going to do it and I hope you will, too.