Oh, I didn’t see you there

I waited my turn for my lunch order to be finished. I drank my coffee and skimmed WordPress comments on my phone. The big guy next to me had his back turned towards me. I could see that he wasn’t paying much attention to anyone else. He kept moving towards me. I inched my way further away until I was right next to a large upright cooler and couldn’t move anymore.

At one point he swiveled so quickly that he came close to knocking the coffee out of my hand and onto the floor. His friend seeing this, grabbed his arm and motioned for him to move closer. He told him that he was going to run into someone. The guy was oblivious to anyone else around him. He barely even acknowledged that he would have been in the wrong.

I’ve been noticing more guys like him.

Looking out for me, myself and I!

I’ve noticed a lot lately that people — men and women — seem to have lost that part of themselves that understands where they are in space and time. It’s like the new driver who gets so used to the back-up camera and warning system in their car that they forget to actually look behind them. The problem is everywhere. It’s online, in stores, on the roads, I feel like it happens to us every day. People seem to make everything about themselves. They fail to notice anyone else around them. They’re oblivious to others.

Oblivious — Lacking active conscious knowledge or awareness. Lacking remembrance, memory, or mindful attention. Yea, that pretty much explains what I’m seeing. To make things worse, I feel like it’s grown to epidemic proportions.

Am I wrong? Please tell me I’m wrong.

I blame lots of things for the increase:

—I blame basic rudeness and selfishness. Oh, it’s the guy who pulled out in front of me the other day and slowed down to a 10 mph crawl in a 55 mph zone. But then it’s also the old man who played an episode of the Andy Griffith show from the 60s on his phone in a small waiting room. A woman asked him to take it outside. He turned it down for a minute or two. But he quickly turned it back up a few minutes later.

—I blame the politics of the time. It’s always been this way a little, but now more than ever we live in a time when “my politics are right and you’re wrong.” Here’s one for you: Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green snapped last week at a British Sky News reporter in a press conference because she wasn’t from a U.S. outlet and had the audacity to ask a question on the Signal leak.

—I blame the internet. We live in a world where it’s easy to curse and blame others all from the safety of our keyboards. We don’t have to show our faces. We can bully and talk down to others all from the comfort of our couch.

—I think a part of it too is how mean our culture can be now. We have certain hypocritical tendencies. We say one thing, but our actions oftentimes lean the other way. We look down on people who give to others. For every comment praising teachers and health care workers, there’s another one complaining that they have it too easy. For example, everyone says that they love our veterans and our soldiers. However, I would be a rich man if I earned a dollar every time someone has asked me about being the parent of a grown child who went into the Military. When they get you in a quiet place they go, “You let him join the service? You didn’t stop him?” I always laugh to myself. I didn’t let him do anything. He’s an adult and I’m proud of his choices.

Mainly we have an “I didn’t see you standing there” culture because people are caught up in their own lives. The individual is bigger than the we. Oh, I’m generally in line with that, I have my own hopes and dreams, but when the individual starts stepping on others and we’ve forgotten what it means to have empathy and mercy, we have problems.

We need to stand up and stand for the whole. At least, that’s my thought.