Call me old-fashioned, but I’m a big supporter of “please” and “thank you.”
Seriously, it costs nothing to be polite and appreciate an act of kindness.
It’s like finding a penny on the ground. Sure, it’s not a fortune, but hey, it’s still money.
Far too often, I witness acts of kindness being totally ignored, and it happened again just last weekend.
Picture this: I’m in a busy Cardiff shop, and I see a young girl holding the door open for a middle-aged lady.
It’s a classic scene, right? The kind of moment that makes you think, “Ah, there’s hope for humanity!”
But then, shockingly, the lady just breezes through without so much as a nod or a “thank you.”
I mean, come on. Did she think the girl was just auditioning for the role of “Door Holder Extraordinaire”?
Fair play to the young girl, though, she didn’t react.
She just went on with her day, probably thinking, “Well, that was a waste of my good manners!”
Not many of us would have that level of zen, I don’t think.
I can just imagine the inner monologue: “Did I just hold the door for a robot? Is this a social experiment? Am I on a hidden camera show?”
Now, I’d understand if this had happened in a big city like London, where the pace is faster and people are less friendly. It’s like everyone’s in a race to get to the next coffee shop, and politeness is just a speed bump on the road to caffeine.
But in Cardiff? Come on. Are we so preoccupied in our own little worlds that we don’t even notice when someone is being polite anymore?
It’s like we’ve all collectively decided that acknowledging kindness is so last season. “Oh, you held the door for me? How quaint! I’m too busy scrolling through my phone to notice!”
Here’s a thought: we can all make an effort to acknowledge acts of kindness from our fellow humans. There’s no excuse for turning a blind eye to someone’s good deed. Making small, regular gestures of kindness and appreciating the people around us should become a habit.
It’s like exercising. Sure, it’s hard at first, but once you get into it, you start to feel good about yourself.
So, let’s all channel our inner polite person and start a kindness revolution.
Who’s with me? Because if we can’t muster up a simple “thank you,” we might as well start practicing our door-holding skills for the next time we encounter a robot!