It starts with one

I have to wonder what has happened, in this day and age, to drive the common decencies and respect that our parents taught us, away. 

It seems to be commonplace now to go to a grocery store and cut someone off in the parking lot, leave your trash in your cart, leave said cart in between cars or otherwise take up a parking place, or to spit your gum on the ground so some one can step in it - I have been the victim of this more than once. 

Is it really so hard to clean up your trash, put away your cart, or put your gum in a trash receptacle? It seems so. 

This weekend I watched an elderly employee reach into a cart and pull out banana peels and trash and throw them away. Aside from the fact that it is her job, why should she have to clean up after some disrespectful person? Let's face it, it's disrespectful to assume that someone is going to clean up your mess. 

Where has common decency gone? Of course it's not just locally that this happens. Our hometowns are not such an anomaly that we are the only place to experience disrespect. We see it everywhere. 

How about senators and congressman/woman who make comments that are derogatory in nature about their colleagues? How about the "news" people who seem to think their opinions are the news and their inflammatory comments are acceptable? 

None of this makes sense. 

Aerosmith once sang, "There something wrong with the world today, I don't know what it is." And unlike steven Tyler, I do know what it is. 

It's amazingly simple, too. We have lost respect. We have lost respect for our fellow man, for our neighbors, for ourselves. 

So now the challenge is to get it back. Luckily it's simple to start. There is a commercial, and for the life of me I can't remember the product or company it's advertising, that shows a series of events of people helping people. When was the last time you held the door for someone? When was the last time you helped a wheel-chair bound individual cross an icy winter road? When was the last time you did something completely un-selfserving? 

If we took a moment to do something like this we would see change. We would not only see it, but we would feel it. And when you start feel it, when everyone around you starts to feel it, we can create real change. We can bring back the morals, the decencies and the respect that makes us a great people. 

It's a thought anyway.