Speeding Up

I have found myself incredibly annoyed by other people over the past few days.

First it was the woman running the other direction on the same side of the block as me. I got distracted by my dog for a moment, tripped and tumbled into the grass. I was back on my feet, brushing myself off by the time our paths intersected. She ran by, not acknowledging me at all. Annoyed, I thought about how if the situation were reversed I would have at least asked if she was okay.

The next day it was two women walking the looped trail through a park, taking up both sides of the path. As my dog and I ran towards them I waited to see if they would share space on the trail. They made no eye contact, ignoring me completely. I didn’t exist in their world. I wondered if we were invisible to them as my dog and I ran wide into the grass.

The park path is a loop, and soon we were approaching the women again. This time I ran into the grass early, anger rising in my chest and a Paddington hard stare on my face. They didn’t see it, again seeming oblivious to my presence in the park and my annoyance at them. Afterwards, I told my perfectly content dog we just had to let it go. We can’t expect everyone to be considerate.

Yesterday it was another two women taking up the entire path on a wooded trail. There was a cyclist approaching behind them and I nearly ran into a tree when I darted off the path, trying to create space for all of us. Usually a cyclist just has to say on your left on this trail to pass safely. When I jumped back on the path, I heard him say trying to pass instead. 

A few hours later at the grocery store, it was a woman barging into the aisle from the wrong direction after she paused just long enough to take in the stop: do not enter sign on the floor. She smirked, said ‘scuse me and nearly crashed into my cart as I yanked it out of her way. My first thought was how insincere politeness doesn’t make an action any less rude.

It’s only been in retrospect that I have been able to wonder if I’ve been oblivious to any of my own actions coming off poorly to others. I’m sure I’ve been the person who didn’t return a smile, or the one who didn’t create space in time for someone else on the sidewalk. Maybe I’ve come across as the person who stepped a little too close while reaching for a grocery. It’s only afterwards that I’m sure I’ve been the annoying one for someone else.

It’s much easier to see the faults of other people than ourselves.

Normally I can brush off my annoyance at these common occurrences without much effort. I see it as a moment, and then it’s gone. So, the past few days I’ve been wondering why I can’t let these things go as quickly. I’ve wondered why I’m holding onto these moments, letting them alter my mood long after they’ve passed. And then I realized, I’ve been expecting better of people lately.

These past two months, I have witnessed unlimited examples of kindness in the world. There has been seemingly endless compassion and consideration for other people as we’ve all been forced to slow down. For a while now, we’ve been able to recognize that the world is so much bigger than each of our individual worlds. For a while now, it has been really nice to believe this pandemic will create lasting change in our awareness of each other. Lasting kindness toward each other. It’s been easy for me to imagine that we’ve been learning something and that the world will be better.

But now, I’m not so sure. The past few days I have noticed less people smiling at each other as their paths cross. I’ve noticed the noise of traffic turning back up as more cars return to the roads. Businesses are barely back open and already I feel people speeding up again. Now, I find myself wondering if it will be too easy for us to go back to normal.

I don’t want to go back to the normal we lived in before. I don’t want the world finding compassion for each other to have been only a moment in time. This can’t just be a moment where we miss our chance. We don’t need to live in a world where we are too rushed to be kind to others; too busy for the things that matter to us.

Almost every day of quarantine I’ve heard some reference to life being on pause right now. But, life is not on pause. Each morning is still a new day on my calendar. Hours are still hours and minutes are still minutes. Time is still passing even though we have all been moving slower than we’re used to.

Maybe it’s hard to admit, and maybe some people won’t want to in the coming months. But this time has been our real lives. This has been, and continues to be, a chance to start rearranging life to look closer to the one you’ve imagined living. At least, that’s what all of this has been for me. I want to carry these things I’m learning forward.

My world is already better because when I get the opportunity, I will refuse to let my life go back to the normal we knew before. My hope is that we can make the whole world better because enough people won’t want to go back to normal. I believe it’s possible.

The last few days have simply been my reality check that we could all slip back so easily if we let ourselves.