Face Value

About a week ago, I had this conversation with Jeremy about a Facebook friend that had posted a photo of graffiti on his page before the friend had realized what it represented. He simply felt that the graffiti was cool. Consequently, people started making assumptions about this friend's political and social alignments. That got me thinking...

I am constantly amazed at how folks will make all sorts of assumptions about people or situations without educating themselves. That makes me downright angry, until I caught myself in a comment I made to a classmate at massage school last week. I commented that there were some people I just didn't tolerate, although I can't put my finger on why. I realized I was falling victim to the same prejudices Jeremy's friend did.

As much as I would like to believe I am completely open-minded and un-biased, I have to admit I have my own prejudices. They may not be over race or religion, but I do have them. This little episode helped me realize I still have some growing up to do.

So, I went on with my life this week with the mindset that I was going to start trying to understand why people and things are the way they are before I make judgements on them. That, my friends, is hard to do. It is hard to step back from a pushy fellow commuter when they run you over and think, "he's just being an asshole because he may have an important meeting to attend," or "she's only yelling at me because she has a troubled home life - bless her soul."

Shit. The reality is, I would waste WAY too much time trying to psychoanalyze these situations. What the point really should be is that the assholes should be more cognizant of their surroundings. Which brings me back to the graffiti...

After further investigation, the Facebook friend realized that he should have done more research on the graffiti before posting it. In the end, it was a great learning and social experiment, but ultimately it was his negligence that caused the stir.

Like this Facebook friend, I think we're all falling victim to a world that is becoming increasingly fast-paced and the first thing to suffer in our daily schedule is time for concern of our fellow man. We are growing in our sentiment of "me first" attitudes and exponentially caring less for how our actions affect others. Like me, we all have some slowing down to do, and some life-interaction to experience. We need to LOOK UP from our blackberries, droids and iPhones and actually look each other in the face. We need to learn to communicate verbally as well as electronically.

We need FACE value.

We need to understand those folks we're speaking to. We need to actually speak to our neighbors. We should be intimately concerned with the well being of those we come on contact with on a daily basis. Do you spend more time looking down at your phone or at the people that surround you? Do you look at your checkout cashier? Do you greet your neighbors?

Back in the South, I remember when driving down the road, you would wave to every person you passed whether you knew them or not. It created a sense of bonding that I just don't believe exists anymore. We are all much too concerned with the battery life of our cell phones, I'm afraid.