Alas, this post is not about Psych. No, this post is about a short moment today. A fairly insignificant moment, I would say. But the moment intrigued me, so I thought I would reflect.
My roommate and I went to HEB today because we were out of pretty much everything healthy, and that's just not a good existence, is it? Haha. We had loaded everything in the car, so I went to return the cart. This particular HEB didn't have the metal cart returns. These were small, parking space looking places that had been placed as part of the cementing of the grassy areas around the parking lot (I hope that makes sense XD). There was another cart there, haphazardly left almost hanging out of the return. Because I know that shopping carts have a habit of rolling away unexpectedly, and it looked like rain which could bring on wind, I took the extra five seconds to walk the cart to the very end of the return, so it wouldn't roll away. As I turned around, I saw a man walking towards the store. He gave me a funny look, but then he kind of smiled at me and half-nodded. I can only expect that he was commending me for putting in five seconds of extra work so an employee wouldn't have to spend the extra minute hunting down my cart, or so the owner of the car parked near the return wouldn't have to fork out the extra few hundred dollars to fix the dent on their car.
But seriously. The weird look? Doesn't everyone put away their shopping cart properly? And of course, as I ask the question, I know full well the answer. No. Most people don't. 'Murrcans are lazy. We're amazing at half-doing things while still expecting and receiving full credit (come on, college kids. We're pros at this). I don't like to toot my own horn, but I was just doing what my momma taught me by putting away my cart properly. That man's approval was just a happy bonus. It gave me something to write about. It's not very beautiful that at the rate we're going, we'll all look like those giant people from Wall-E who float around in reclining chairs on a space ship. It is beautiful, however, that *hopefully* still put away their shopping carts properly because it's the right thing to do. Even if the numbers are dwindling, at least there are still people who acknowledge good deeds. Perhaps we should all challenge ourselves to, at the least, praise those people who aren't expecting praise.
Just a thought. But I'm really tired right now. So if this post was rambly and incoherent, my apologies.
"Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness. "
Bryant H. McGill
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