I remember well when your eyes and your parents’ eyes meet when there is a visitor and your mum’s eyes carry a lot of messages. I remember those days when it could mean a number of things from my mum: a low glance meant bring drinks, a sharp side look meant leave the room, when she cut her eyes it meant you were out of line or you were talking too much with the guest and you have crossed the line. The ladies and gentlemen in my generation understand this. It’s many years now since we have borne our own children, the Internet generation.
While the Internet itself has its pluses, most young people are permanently distracted and live in their heads. I wonder these days if my mum were alive and tried to get a young person to pay attention to all those eye signs of hers, whether she would have succeeded. It is so difficult these days to get the attention of a young person browsing on their phone.
They are so busy with tweets, whatsapp and all other social messaging that they are often not physically present in your presence. So you visit a friend with a young person and throughout the visit, the young person is on the phone, ears plugged and simply unavailable during this visit. It’s amazing how we survived without them. Please don’t get me wrong, all the technological gadgets today have their places in our lives and have improved our lives tremendously. It’s balancing that with real life that shows how well rounded one is. When young people visit with me in my office, I am restraining myself from walking some of them out of my office. I am quite honestly unable to deal with someone playing with their phones when I am talking to them and yet they are the ones in my office to seek a favour. Merde!
The other day a young lady came to visit. She was seeking a position on my personal team. Throughout the informal interview I had with her in the presence of the person who recommended her, she was fiddling with her phone, which kept beeping. I was totally ticked off by this behaviour that I told her to switch off her phone and concentrate. You guessed! Of course, she did not get the job.
As we continue in our Lenten journey to make restitution with God, we must, all of us, learn that rudeness is not just about what we say to another unkindly. It is about body movement, how we say what we say, and empathy.
Here are some takes:
(a) It is rude when you constantly interrupt someone speaking to you, even if it is a friend, and prevent them from expressing themselves because you want to prove that you know it all.
(b) It is rude when you talk all the time in a gathering and you pretend that the other parties have nothing to say.
(c) It is rude when you talk back at your parent, superior or boss in the office.
(d) It is rude when you are texting quite brazenly when a paper is being delivered. This is an indication that you are not paying attention or the speaker is talking rubbish.
(e) It is rude when a young person thinks they are smarter than their parents and intellectualize everything including “Could you please take the dustbin out?
(f) It is rude when in writing to your boss you try to make him look stupid by using abusive words and thinking you are sharp.
(g) It is rude when you arrive very late to an event and you struggle to make your way to the front while people are trying to concentrate on an engaging or even an un-engaging speaker. Your noisy shoes, your back-slapping and high-five are a distraction to everyone. At this time you are not only rude but everyone considers you painful and ridiculous.
(h) It is rude when you go to a formal event wearing your party dress, short with cleavage everywhere. It’s not cute. It’s rude.
(i) It is rude when you walk into a room full of people, don’t say hello, have an attitude and go sit in a corner.
(j) It is rude and crude when you take on someone lower in the social or corporate ladder and begin to insult them or make them feel miserable.
(k) It is rude when you sit in a class and you know the answer to three-quarters of the questions asked and you insist on putting your hand up each time. It is rude and unkind because that classmate of yours who is not half as brilliant as you is unable to even try because you intimidated them into silence. Be kind. Let them try.
It’s Lent. Cut out your rude nature and be on the mend.
Rude people don’t rule.
Enough said.
Eugenia Abu
