Thoughts on Human Kindness

Part 21 in a series by Karen A. Stevenson, President, Studio K Salon

Remember that famous quote from Rodney Dangerfield, “I don’t get no respect”?  Back then; it used to be a joke.  These days, it seems the norm.  Walk into a grocery store, and stand by the customer service desk for a few minutes and see if you get respect.  Call a consumer’s hotline technical support number for your brand new $1500 computer system, and see if you don’t get three or four prompts all leading you to another automated answering machine indicating there is “no one in the office to help you at this time”.  Order a mattress from your local bedding store, and see if delivery is on time much less delivered on the date they promised it would be delivered!  Order a pizza and see if you aren’t slammed on hold faster than you can get your first words of “I’d like…” out of your mouth. 

Where is the so-called personal service?  What happened to treating people like individuals with true compassion and concern?  Did we get so automated that no one exists for the one-on-one job of caring anymore? 

I called a church the other day and was amazed to hear the ol’ “Press One for the Senior Pastor”, “Press Two for the Associate Pastor”, so on and so forth, until they had “Press six for someone to pray with you”!  I must admit it may have gone too far! 

Where does such impersonal disregard for humanity come from? Is it truly a technology issue, or is it deeper than that? 

I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t how we treat one another in our families?  Are we so busy that we cannot treat each other with the respect of eye contact, complete sentences, and a sprinkle of kindness?  Are our teens on the computer so much that their entire life evolves around Instant Messaging and therefore short fused when they need to reply to a question by speaking?  Have we been so bothered by cell phone overload and Highway 40 traffic all day that we cannot say ‘hello’ to our mate without biting their head off?  What happened to the days when we had time to ‘think’ about our lives in silence? Remember coming home to a phone that did not have an answering machine attached to it, and families communicated to each other at dinnertime?  We didn’t use to lose our documents somewhere in the abyss of cyber world.  We didn’t have to worry about computer viruses, just cold and flu viruses! 

Kids used to ask the parents about a subject, and if the parent’s didn’t know the answer, the family would look it up in the dictionary around the coffee table.  Now, kids look it up on “Google Search”.  Where are we needed, anyway? 

I heard on a radio station survey people calling and answering if they thought it would be better or worse in 200 years from now.  Most people thought it would be worse.  Why?  More technology?  Maybe then, we’ll have dial-up or better yet, cable modem therapists…no, wait, I think that’s already been invented!  They also asked if it was better 30 years ago, in the 1973 range.  Amazingly, most answered it was better, because people were not as pressured.  Which leads me right back to the point of respect.

As much as we’d all like to think we’ve facilitated our lifestyle with all the new gadgets, new toys, and up to date technology, there is something we seem to be losing.  “Time”. I took the “time” to listen to the words of a song I’d heard the melody over and over again in the past few months.  As I focused on listening, it became a lovely song of compassion, care, and sentimental words that pulled at my heart.   

In the midst of such a hurried lifestyle, the emotions that should be lovingly shown seem to be dimmed by the aggravation, lack of patience, frustration, and quick tempers of those around.  It would appear that grace, forgiveness, consideration for others, and heart to heart communication is fading in the dust of today’s world.

We are all searching for that thing that fills the void, nothing but time, understanding, and respect can fulfill.