During my brief stint as a high school psychology teacher

During my brief stint as a high school psychology teacher, my seniors, many of whom have since become dear friends, did an experiment on manners. Each student was given a list of mannerly goals – simple objectives often observed in polite society – and asked that they record the reactions of others and whether they were, in the end, treated differently when being polite. These students were not, by and large, bad kids, but the experiment proved successful enough – and caught enough attention in the school – that I was asked to make it an annual campus-wide week. On some level, having a week to focus on manners seems inane, when we all should carry them with us daily, but I fear we’ve reached a point where politeness is seen as anachronistic.  Polite society has lost its “cool factor.”

We can all take a gander at what’s happened to that life, other than to say it disappeared with the “Life of Riley,” but I’m a product of a world when manners were still deemed important and the “Golden Rule”, particularly, a paramount of civility. How we treat one another is very much a reflection of ourselves, our families, and how we were raised, and, thus, why, among other things, I abhor a bully. The truth is, we often falsify the narrative and tell children it gets better, and in some arbitrary way, it does, as we develop social skills to deal with the bitterness of naysayers and as most of us mature beyond the need to pull hair and stick our of tongues. Unfortunately, those antics seem to be more and more replaced by cutting words and indirect brutality.  “Sticks and stones may break my bones” can only get us so far. Regrettably, there are people among us who enjoy hurting others, void entirely of “the Golden Rule.”

Years ago, my friend, Sandy Worley Rowe, made a Facebook post that so resonated that I wrote down her words:  “When you judge another person, you don’t define them, you define yourself.” I thought of her words again, just recently, when another friend came out of his business to find a nasty, derogatory note left on his car. The note, of course, was anonymous.  Most of us already accept that meandering through life can be difficult at the best of times. I’m not sure why anyone would want to make someone else’s path harder.  Even when hiding behind niceties, there’s nothing polite about a bully, even in times when we vehemently disagree.  It seems another indication of the direction of our society. We should teach our children better, and we, as adults, should live by that example. We rise, after all, by lifting others.