Photo courtesy of Hamed Asad

Living Madly: A Cup of Kindness

By Emilie-Noelle Provost

You’ve probably seen the homemade signs hanging in stores and restaurants, the ones imploring customers to treat their workers kindly. As public-facing employees, waitstaff, store clerks, and baristas have borne the lion’s share of abuse dished out by belligerent consumers over the past few years, a problem that has become all too ubiquitous. It’s one of the main reasons, no doubt, that many retail establishments remain understaffed nearly five years after the COVID-19 lockdown was lifted.

It’s not just these businesses that have had ongoing problems with offensive behavior. People everywhere seem to have gotten mean. In nearly all walks of life, we have become intolerant of one another, of anything another person does or says that even marginally infringes upon the imaginary bubbles in which we seem to now go about our lives.

My daughter, an art teacher at a local elementary school, has told hair-raising stories about phone calls she’s had to make to the parents of misbehaving students. Along with other teachers at the school, she has been verbally attacked, subjected to misogynistic slurs, and physically threatened so many times that all phone calls to parents are now made by the school principal.

I’ve heard similar stories from nurses, automotive technicians, pizza delivery guys, plumbers. Road rage incidents, hate crimes, domestic violence cases, even the number of murders have all increased at alarming rates in recent years. It’s enough to make a person wonder what the hell is going on, how on earth we got to this dystopian place.

For one thing, basic manners have gone out the window. Less than a generation ago, simple phrases like please, thank you, and excuse me were the oil that kept civilized society’s gears turning. In some cases, these niceties have been replaced by silence and apathy. In others, by pure venom—hatred-laced profanity and even physical violence.

At the beginning of each school year, my daughter takes time out of her art lessons to teach nearly every kindergartener in her classes basic manners, things that most of us learned almost as soon as we could speak. For some kids, it’s the first time they’ve heard please, thank you, or excuse me used on a regular basis. And it’s the first time many of the kids have been required to use them.

The slow death of mainstream media has led to the rise of dozens of far right- and left-leaning “news” outlets, platforms that have allowed, even encouraged, their consumers to construct bespoke realities in which anyone who fails to share a particular belief system is viewed as an enemy. This trend has rendered many people incapable of engaging in civilized debate, unable to see the benefits of considering another’s point of view.

This widescale intolerance has created an incubator for the type of loathing once reserved for the vilest examples of humanity—serial killers, pedophiles, Nazis— motivating its adherents to believe it’s acceptable to unleash their scorn upon any fellow citizens with whom they might disagree.

Perhaps worst of all, we as a society no longer engage in civic life the way we once did. For the first time in American history, fewer people are affiliated with religious institutions than those who are not. We don’t join clubs, throw block parties, play baseball, volunteer for charities, get together and hang out for no specific reason. A lot of people don’t even have friends. According to a recent article in The Atlantic, the number of people who say they have no close friends at all has quadrupled since 1990.

If we don’t spend time with people who are not like us, or with people at all, opting instead to dwell in the homogenous silos fostered by social media platforms, the meanspirited culture that has overtaken the country will only continue to get worse.

For a long time, I felt paralyzed by this. I did what most people do when they feel threatened or hopeless: As I went about my daily business, I stayed in my lane where I knew it was safe. Although I was always polite, I avoided interacting with anyone I could easily avoid.

Lately, though, especially since the election, this hasn’t felt right to me.

I’ve begun making an effort to be as nice as I can to the people I meet. I go out of my way to be polite to the employees working in stores and restaurants, especially to the ones who seem unhappy. I do my best to be patient and understanding when someone gets my order wrong. If I like a person’s shoes or hat, I tell them. I hold doors. I smile and say hello to as many people as I can. Almost everyone smiles back.

The other day, I got into a conversation with an older woman in front of me in a checkout line. She told me she was having a difficult time because Christmas is coming and her husband had just died. It’s not the kind of thing people normally tell strangers, but I got the feeling she needed to talk to someone. So, instead of just telling her I was sorry, I asked her about her husband: How had he died? How long had they been married? Did they have kids?

Her face lit up as she talked about him. By the time we left the store, she seemed a little happier, and I hoped I had made her burden just a little bit lighter.

Being polite and friendly requires very little effort. In fact, I’m convinced that being nice uses less energy than acting like a jerk does. When I make someone smile, some of their positive energy is reflected back to me. It always makes me feel lighter and more hopeful about the world.

Instead of making a New Year’s resolution to read more books or set aside more time to write this year, I’ve decided to do what I can to make the small part of the world I live in a little brighter. Hopefully, it will catch on.

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Emilie-Noelle Provost (she/her) is the author of The River Is Everywhere, a National Indie Excellence Award, American Fiction Award, and American Legacy Award finalist, and The Blue Bottle, a middle-grade adventure with sea monsters. Visit her at emilienoelleprovost.com.