Posts Tagged: hurry

“A Confrontation in a Kroger Parking Lot”

On September 4, 2024 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

My wife was waiting for a lady to pull out from a parking spot in a Kroger parking lot. She had waited for quite a while, but when the lady finally pulled out, another “lady” who had just come around the corner from the other direction whipped into the parking space. My wife is not known for being confrontational, but she did speak to the lady about it. The woman just shrugged her shoulders and walked toward the entrance to the store.

There seems to be an epidemic of rudeness these days. Everything has become a competition, even finding the closest parking spot. On the other hand, perhaps we are just in too much of a hurry to be courteous. Or, is it that we are all so self-obsessed that we think that everything should be for us and our convenience? I am reminded of a tagline—as best I can remember it—from a radio personality in Cincinnati who did radio skits that purported to be investigative journalism: “Our right to know supersedes everyone else’s right to exist.”

Perhaps all the above are contributing to our individual and collective rudeness? In any case, I feel as if courtesy ought to be placed on the endangered species list.

If I am right that competition, speed, and self-centeredness are all involved in our rudeness, what might help to breed more courtesy in our world as well as in the Kroger parking lot? Here are a few suggestions that border on the obvious.

  • Recognize that not everything is a competition, so don’t turn it into that!
  • Slow down!
  • Realize that life is not about you. Instead, life is about us.
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“Depends on Where You Look”

On September 28, 2020 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Is the world (or at least the human part of the world) a mess? Or is the world achingly beautiful?

Depends on where you look.

For example, this morning I was outside, and I nearly witnessed a wreck. The highway department is working on a small section of road near our house. In order to avoid a longer detour, people are cutting through the housing development across the road from us. This is despite the signs that read “NO THRU TRAFFIC”! The sign is positioned so that it blocks the right lane at the entry of the subdivision. Of course, many people are paying absolutely no attention to the sign, and there is a lot of traffic through this residential area.

So, there was a truck pulling a trailer waiting to pull out of the subdivision onto the main highway, and there was a car trying to turn left into the subdivision. But the sign was in the way, so the car turning left got hung up with his/her car right in the path of oncoming traffic on the main road. A car came barreling down the highway from the other direction. Fortunately, he/she was able to stop before hitting the car. But it was close.

Why all this unnecessary drama? Hurry, I suppose, and an unwillingness to obey the law because people were in a hurry. I am reminded of what someone said many years ago when things weren’t quite as hurried as they are now. “Hurry is not of the devil. Hurry is the devil.” Hurry is ugly, and it breeds more ugliness.

But the reason I was outside to see this little scenario unfolding was because of beauty. The sun was just coming up and kissing the tops of the trees, when a very brief shower arrived from the west. I hustled downstairs and out the kitchen door to see if there was a rainbow. There wasn’t, or at least, I didn’t see one. But the sunrise was beautiful, and the fragrance in the air after the shower reminded me of the Garden of Eden, even though I’ve never there. A few leaves were falling from a nearby tree, and my wife’s flowers were as stunningly beautiful as the one who planted them.

We need to look at the ugliness of life and consider whether we might be contributing to it. Yes, we do! And slowing down enough to obey the warning signs might be advisable as well. There are a lot of small children in that subdivision across the road. Being in a hurry and not heeding the signs could lead to something much more horrendous than a car accident.

But we need to look at the beauty of life as well. Indeed, we need to look, not only at the beauty, but for the beauty.

Everything depends on where you look.

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