Just this once.....

So are you considerate? I am...., well most of the time I mean come on sometimes I am in a hurry aren't you, I mean well just this once it won't hurt anyone if.....

Today I was trying to pull out of a driveway from a parking area onto a busy road and along comes another driver who wanted to pull into the same driveway. So thier solution was to stop in the middle of the road with their indicator on holding up all the traffic behind them, clearly getting in the way I had wanted to travel and glaring at me as if I was being very inconsiderate for being where they wanted to go. This forced me to turn in the opposite direction to allow them to get out of everyone elses road. I guess I could have sat there and glared back but hey I would probably still be there, breath in and let the small things go.

A short distance down the road in the wrong direction (from my point of view) I encounted another vehicle that was crawling along as the driver was looking for a park again eyes fixed (well swivilling I guess) on their needs and oblivious to those behind them such as myself and about four other vehicles.

Another breath and sigh... let it go.... however I did start mumbling to myself about why people behave this way. Of course the social scientists will tell you that it is because you are not in their (the people causing you the problem) tribe. i.e. they don't know you, therefore they don't care.
Apparantly we can only maintain about 50 - 70 close (ish) relationships before the time and effort overwhelms us. We can have many more people that we know but even then there is a limit measured in a few hundred for most of us before we just don't care. It simply isn't possible for you to truley care about everyone.

This is not the same as being able to empathise we can do that for anyone once their plight is presented to us, but we don't feel sad about all the people who will be murdered in the next 24 hours as we just don't know them. When someone we know turns up in the statistic we have an entirely different reaction.

But I don't think that is entirely it, I think sometimes we know damn well we are being inconsiderate but in that moment we think "well most of the time I am good" a little bad for just a couple of minutes won't really hurt. "Hey I really need to park my car and I am in a hurry" Trouble is if everyone does this even just now and again our odds of striking someone in any given day go up a lot.

So the next time you are tempted to take up two parks because getting it right is hard, or leaving your supermarket trolley in the middle of the isle while you scoot back for the soup you forgot etc, just remeber that we all reap what we sow in the world of consideration. Life's short but not that short and the time you save today may be wasted tomorrow when someone else forgets about you.