Living in A Bubble Is No Way To Live [View All]

[MineralMan]

My Sunday trip to the supermarket brought up something I've noticed for a long time, so I'm going to write about it just a little.

Looking around at the people near me as I shopped convinced me, once again, that most people live their lives in little bubbles. Inside their bubble, they are the most important people on the planet, and they seem unaware of all the other people around them. I can find no other explanation for the behavior I see again and again. For every person I encounter who makes eye contact and smiles, there are 20 who see nothing at all and act accordingly.

Today, the woman who parked her cart in the middle of the aisle and then wandered off to go to another aisle to find something, was an example. Another was the family of five who were shopping together and walking abreast through the entire store. I had to avoid them three times on this trip alone. Then, there's the guy who was entering the store just ahead of me who stopped just inside the automatic door to pull out his shopping list and study it, completely blocking the entrance. My "Excuse me, please..." got a glaring look from this one.

And it's not just the supermarket. The person driving their car down the middle of a residential street who does not move over to the right when encountering another car approaching is also in the bubble. The person who pulls into the gas station's empty lane and doesn't pull forward to the last pump is another. The driver who stares straight ahead and never consults the mirror and ignores the traffic merging from the on ramp is still another. The guy who carelessly parks halfway into the next space in a busy parking lot, or who pull into a space someone is clearly waiting for, is yet another example.

You see it at the movie theater, when people insist on two seats for themselves, piling their worldly goods on the seat next to them in a crowded theater, then being offended if you and your partner want to sit together in that and the adjacent seat. "Excuse me, but would you mind moving your things so we can sit here?" brings a harsh look or a "Fuck you." I understand when people want an aisle seat at the theater, but must they just sit there, unmoving, when others want to enter the row?

We appear, as a culture, to have forsaken our responsibility to be aware of our surroundings and assess the impact of our actions on others who share our space in public. Not everyone, of course, does this, but enough do that things slow down to an unacceptable level as we must go around, take another route, or beg permission to occupy space and move through life.

I could give examples of this bubble life for hours, and I'm sure most of us here could do the same. How do we make contact with the bubble people? How do we let them know that awareness is part of politeness? How do we move toward a more polite society if we cannot even contact those who live in their bubble world? I try very hard to always be aware of everyone and everything around me, and usually resist an angry response to those who do not. But politely asking people to behave as though they were not the only person on the planet often brings an imprecation rather than an "Excuse me." What can we do?