Category — manners

What is with the selfish sense of entitlement some people have? Why do these people feel that unless their personal concerns are addressed first, that they are being treated poorly?

Yesterday morning there was an underground explosion and fire in downtown Vancouver. This explosion reportedly blew a man-hole cover several feet into the air and melted several kilometers of wire.

Obviously, an explosion like this has caused some issues. Several businesses and residences are still without power, traffic lights were down for at least part of yesterday and getting out of downtown by Transit was taking longer as the buses needed to reroute to go around the problem area. Pretty standard – and rather mild – fallout from an underground explosion.

CBC on-line gives readers the ability to comment on all the news stories they print – which is awesome. So when I looked through the comments on this particular story, the comment that really caught my eye was this one by jahn32:

“Of course they would get the traffic lights and transit system up and running first. Residents and businesses are being treated as second class citizens like always it seems.”

What garbage.

I hate this sort of petulant whining. “My needs as an individual weren’t immediately met. I’m being treated as second class citizen – even though I pay those bastards salary with MY tax dollars. Whine, whine, whine.”

Give me a friggin’ break. This situation was handled perfectly. Yes, jahn32, they would get the traffic lights and transit system up and running first. That only makes sense. If there are people leaving their offices because they can’t work – that means a lot of aimless and nosy people trying to take a look at the problem area. Lots of people looking at something they know nothing about hampers the fire crews, BC Hydro workers and the necessary equipment from getting to the problem and fixing it.

With transit running and traffic lights working, those people can all leave the downtown core without the need for taking several police officers off important things like catching bad guys and sticking them on traffic duty.

With the curious and bored out of the way – BC Hydro can begin assessing and fixing the problem.

It’s not as though whatever actually exploded under the street is a sentient and cruel being who wanted to inconvenience people. This business of feeling like a ”second class” citizen is ridiculous. What a stupid and thoughtless thing to say. People like Rosa Parks have the right to say they were treated as second class citizens – people who are temporarily inconvenienced by a power outage don’t.

What is the difference between feeling guilty and being sorry? Is there a difference at all?

I’ve been really curious about this since the debacle that happened a few months ago involving people I used to be friends with. I really wish I could talk about the details to make things clearer, but I can’t. I made promises and I mean to keep them.

According to my reference copy of the OED guilt means “the fact of having committed a specified or implied offence.” The meaning of sorry is “pained, regretful or penitent” or “an expression of apology”.

My interpretation of these are that if I feel guilty, then it only means that I am aware I have done something to offend or hurt another person. If I feel sorry, then not only am I aware I’ve done something hurtful, but I wish to apologize and make amends for the harm I’ve done. So for me, feeling sorry comes directly after (and often with) feeling guilty.

What do you do with people who feel guilty, but never feel sorry?

How do you explain to them that feeling guilty is all very well – but if they carry on with the offensive behaviour, their admission of guilt is essentially worthless?

For instance: When I was 11 or so, I stole a deck of tarot cards. I saw them sitting on the shelf in a pretty, shiny box and I wanted them. I had no great understanding of what they were for, nor did I need them – but I wanted them anyway. I tucked them into a pocket and walked out with them. I was gleeful (I got away with it!) and nervous (I’m going to a juvenile detention centre!) and I was sure there would be a price to pay for stealing them.

I felt vaguely ashamed of my behaviour and I made all sorts of excuses as to why it was OK. I had millions of reasons why I didn’t need to beat myself up over taking something that wasn’t mine. It was all fine – it was just something that took me over, I couldn’t help it after all. I’m only human!

Once the thrill wore off, shame was replaced with guilt. I knew that stealing was wrong and I knew that if I was caught I’d be begging to get sent to a juvenile detention centre just so my parents couldn’t get at me. There was no way to justify my actions.

I hid the cards – I was sure that everyone knew I had them. I got this awful, hot and  twisting feeling in my stomach just thinking of them. I knew better and did it anyway. I know that I hurt the feelings of that shop owner and I didn’t come clean or apologize. I talked myself into living with the guilt and shame in ways that allowed me to use the cards with some measure of enjoyment. I could tuck away those feelings for months at a time, but my relationship to that deck of cards was always tainted by how I obtained them.

And I never once seriously entertained the notion of returning the cards. Not once.

I knew I’d obtained them in the worst possible way (stealing, deception, lies…) but I also knew I wasn’t returning them. Not ever. So, I think it could be safely said that I didn’t feel sorry. Who cares if I felt ashamed and guilty – I deserved that misery. I earned it.

I still have those cards and I still feel guilty. Not gut-twisting guilt anymore, but a little pool of shame looking back at my greedy and selfish actions.

I did eventually feel sorry about those cards; enough to send the owner $50 and a hand-written apology when I was in my early 20′s. I’ve never heard anything from her so I assume it’s been forgotten (maybe even forgiven).

Now replace “pack of cards” with “people”. What if it was someone’s happiness or sense of self instead? What if your actions destroyed the trust between friends? What if you lied to all the people closest to you – including yourself! – would feeling guilty be enough for you to absolve yourself and keep going? Would you just sweep it under the rug and hope no one ever saw it?

Guilt and shame come up to tell you that you’ve done something wrong. If you’re feeling guilty, it’s a good idea to figure out why. If you’re feeling ashamed and like you have to lie about something you did wrong, or find yourself justifying your poor choices and shifting blame, then there is a problem.

And if you never move onto the feeling sorry stage of things, if you just keep on doing it and lying and omitting to cover it up – then it’ll all fall apart.  How can anything built on lies, deceit and other people’s misery be good?

I understand why people do it; why they tell lies, deceive others and twist things to suit their needs. They don’t want to look like bad people. They want the approval of others badly enough to lie to themselves and everyone around them. When they get caught out, telling people they felt guilty about their actions is another way of saying “I’m not a bad person – see? I feel guilt!”

Well OK, you feel guilty, but that guilt is simply shame with no sense of responsibility. Not only are you asking people to see you as a good person, you’re asking people to relieve you of any culpability. It can’t possibly be your fault, or your problem to fix; you feel so guilty! The big problem here is narcissism really. Being in love with your own ideas of yourself to the point that you can’t have an honest interaction with another human being on any level – and worse, the idea of being utterly honest and exposed scares the hell out of you.

And if you feel sorry at all, it’s only the feeling that comes of getting caught.

Mea culpa? Only if you’re brave enough to face the consequences of your actions.

This blog was supposed to be the writings of someone working as a technical writer.

The part about me being an employed technical writer was true up until last Monday when I woke up and simply could not go to work.

Let me explain.

I’ve had days where I would wake up and the Brat that lives in my head would say “Oh man, weren’t you just at work yesterday? I think staying home and playing video games and reading would be more fun today.” but that other little voice in my head – I call her the Drill Sergeant - would say “You will go to work. It’s your responsibility to go to work and be productive because that is what adults do. Get moving.”

I’ve always just obeyed and that other voice telling me I could do something more fun than work would go off and sulk in a corner. I figure this is true for most people – and that most people obey their own inner drill sergeant.

Last Monday started out no different. I woke up, grumbled about getting up at 5:45 a.m. just so I could make it to work by 8 a.m. and then got up and showered. While in the shower I wondered at the sheer stupidity of having to get up this early just to be on time to a job that wasn’t doing anything in the way of making me happy. Furthermore – and this is where the Brat started getting her ugly on – why the hell should I spend 40 hours a week wishing I was elsewhere? What purpose is this serving? Could I not be happier doing something else?

The Drill Sergeant kicked back in and told me to get my butt moving and whine on my own time. So, I got my things together, put on my coat and shoes and went to the door.

Normally, Joe and I say goodbye at the door and off I go. This time, I just looked at him, looked out the door. Looked at him, looked out the door. For 15 minutes. Normally, I don’t keep him too long at the door in the cold morning air in his bare feet – and Monday it didn’t even register. I stared. I listened to the sounds of traffic and birds and looked at the grey sky and my feet stayed firmly planted.

I went back inside, put my bag down, took my coat off and disappeared into the bathroom where I proceeded to empty the contents of my stomach. I cleaned up and went back to the door. When Joe came out of the bathroom I was standing like a catatonic idiot with my coat and backback on. I think I’d been there for maybe 20 minutes or so. I’m not sure.

I kept thinking, “If you leave now, right NOW, you can still get to work and only be 15 minutes late. You can make that up on your lunch hour and just say the buses were running slow today. Get. Going.”

I simply stood there. The Brat was digging in her heels and throwing a tantrum. A quiet, dignified tantrum, but the message was clear: “No. I can’t do this anymore.”

Finally, Joe slid my backpack from my shoulders, then my coat and directed me to the couch where I sat and stared at the door for a long time.

Then my brain melted in the form of incoherent babbling and crying. I called my boss – I had enough sense of responsibility to do that – and she said the same thing the Drill Sergeant said. “You have to to go work. It’s your responsibility! This puts me in a very awkward position.”

As if I weren’t aware! It had taken just about every ounce of responsibility and courage I had left to call her at all – and that was it. When we hung up I had my second meltdown of the hour and it struck me: I didn’t care anymore.

And that’s the part that scared the hell out of me. I didn’t care. Me. Little Miss Responsibility. And it wasn’t the sort of not caring that comes of having a crappy attitude and no work ethic – it was the sort of not caring that comes of feeling nothing, of feeling blank inside.

I’ve always taken my responsibilities very seriously. You get up and go to work. It’s what adults do. You do your best at work to be productive, useful and professional. That’s what adults do! You collect your cheque and use it to the pay bills. This is just how it is.

If the people you work with are rude – you simply smile and act professional and polite. If they give you a good dressing down and call your ethics and abilities into question without cause, you smile and act professional and polite. You tell yourself that just because the people you work with are incapable of acting like adults doesn’t mean you can walk away, shirk your duties or stop being useful and loyal. Welcome to being an adult; it sucks. Deal with it.

My belief in that vanished in an instant.

I didn’t want to crawl in bed and hide from the world – but I knew I needed out. No more waiting, no more “paying my dues” with employers who didn’t see me as an investment, who didn’t pay me what I was worth, who were rude, condescending and generally just jerks. I’d been putting up with all of that for years assuming that this is just what the working world is like.

Monday was a wake up call for me. I am a writer who never writes. I’ve written almost nothing in the last year. I scribbled the odd journal entry most of which read something like this:

“What the hell am I doing here? I feel like all the best parts of my brain and abilities are going away because I neglect them.”

Writing seemed like too much effort. I wasn’t doing it at work why should I do it at home? Why would I spend my spare time sitting in front of my laptop writing when I could be doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom or getting groceries? I almost started think that writing for fun was stupid and childish somehow. Embarrassing even – like being caught picking your nose.

And everything I might have written was a lot like this entry and I was too scared to write it. What if my employers saw it? What if someone who knows my employers sees it and tells them? What if I got fired for not wanting to treat my time with a company like a prison sentence (“You just have to serve your time and you’ll get noticed!”)? How would I ever pay the bills? What would I tell Joe? What kind of responsible adult would I be if I got fired just because I didn’t go to work?

No more of that for me. I’m taking some time to find the joy I used to have in writing. I need to redefine what I want from a job.  Just getting a cheque is no longer enough for me. I want to be a writer who writes – and I want to be reasonably happy while I do it.