Tag: advice

Manners

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The children now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for elders …. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, and gobble up dainties at the table….*

I am astounded by the total lack of manners some people show today. Everywhere I look, I am surrounded by rude people with absolutely no respect for others and it makes me wonder about their upbringing. Sadly, this world has become a very impolite place to live in.

I would like to remind people of some fairly basic manners. Here are some of the most forgotten customs that I see that need to be brought back into today’s society.

I think the first set of manners that I was taught as a child was to always say “please” and “thank you.” Saying please and thank you shows good upbringing and is respectful. The one you are saying this to is a person and they are worthy of respect just like you are. Combine this with a “You’re welcome”, and you have a trifecta of good etiquette.

My parents instructed me that you are supposed to hold the door for anyone. It does not matter who they are, male, female, young, old, someone you love or someone you hate. You show respect to someone anyways and you hold the door open for them. I will do the same for you.

Excuse me, but I do not understand why we have forgotten how to say “excuse me” when we are trying to go past another person or when we accidentally bump into them. Since when did it become okay to bump into someone and act like it did not matter to you? Oh yeah, it never has.

According to gotquestions.org, saying “bless you” to someone could have begun in several different places. The most prevalent line of thought is it originated from illness. In 590 AD, Italy underwent a terrible plague and the Pope decreed that whenever someone sneezed, people were to say “God bless you” and make the sign of the cross over their mouths, to try to keep the individual from becoming infected with the plague.

Because a sneeze was a symptom of the plague, people who heard another sneeze and said “God bless you” took interest in the person’s life. So now, when someone sneezes, and someone else says “bless you,” they are displaying manners from a long time ago. This might seem like a trivial act, but it is something that can show someone you care.

It might just be me, but something that can tick me off faster than getting cut off in traffic is when someone you are talking to does not make eye contact with me while we are having a conversation. Eye contact is one of the keys to having a good conversation. People now days stare at their phones while talking to each other. When someone does this to me I just stop talking. Obviously what is happening on their small screen is more important than having a real conversation with me.  When you are talking with someone, look them in the eyes to let them know they are important to you and you are listening to what they have to say.

Interrupting and talking over each other seems to be a national pastime. Watch one episode of “Jerry Springer” and you will see what I mean. There are a few acceptable times when it is OK to interrupt, like when the building is on fire or saying “Watch out” to prevent someone from getting hurt.

You don’t monopolize a conversation. I know your life is interesting, but so is mine. I have things in my life that I want to share with you. However if you are talking so much and I can’t get a word in edgewise or you don’t listen to me I feel you are disrespecting me.

If you are over the age of five, you should know proper table manners. You don’t chew with your mouth open, you keep your elbows off the table, you don’t reach in front of others’ plates, ask to have things passed to you. You don’t talk with your mouth full and you ask to be excused from the table when you are done eating. I learned these things via the “wooden spoon” method. My mother had a wooden spoon at the dinner table and if you transgressed…………………… well, you know what happened.

I believe in good old fashioned manners. I believe that a man should pay for dinner on a date. I believe that a man should come to the door when he picks up a lady, not sit on the street honking his horn. I believe that a man should open a woman’s car door and hold doors open for her.

* FYI The opening paragraph in this article is taken from a statement made by the philosopher Socrates (469–399 B.C.). I guess some things never change.

Norb is a freelance journalist from Lockport.

My Personal 10 commandments:

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1) Be nice. I put this one first because I feel it is the most important commandment. It costs you nothing to be nice to people. It can be as simple as a “Good morning” when you first see them each day. Be nice to everyone, especially those that aren’t nice to you. It will drive them crazy and make them wonder what you are up to.

2) Respect others. Respect is essential because it demonstrates that you value the rights and dignity of someone else as a human being. Everyone deserves your respect no matter their station in life. From a homeless person to a fast food worker to the CEO of a company. You don’t know their story and they may be doing the best they can.

3) Drive carefully. This is not just for you but for me, my family and everyone else on the road. Also don’t drive when you shouldn’t, like when you are angry, stoned on drugs or drunk.

4) Donate to the less fortunate. This will make you feel good. Donating to a charity anonymously is one of the best feelings in the world. I have honestly found in life that the most generous people I met were the ones with the least. When I lived in Massachusetts, I lived in a WPA housing development where everyone there was either on some kind of financial assistance or receiving a low income. Nobody ever went hungry there because everyone would share their food allotment with everyone else. They would also have a monthly food “swap” where they would trade what they wouldn’t use for something they would.

5) Help others. Offer to shovel their snow, cut their grass, rake their leaves and help with odd jobs. You might not know just who could use help unless you ask. Some people are too proud to ask for help. I used to snow blow my entire block in my youth. I was already out there and it didn’t take me much longer to snow blow 10 front sidewalks as it did to do just mine. Besides, it was just the neighborly thing to do.

6) Provide a good example. Your children will learn how to act as adults by watching how you act much more than how you tell them to act. For most children, the most important role models are their parents and caregivers like grandparents that have a regular presence in their lives. Your children will see your example either positive or negative, as a pattern for the way life is to be lived.

7) Listen more. Everyone loves to talk about themselves. The most rudimentary of all human requirements is the need to understand and be understood. The greatest way to appreciate people is to pay attention to them. Sometimes listening to someone will prove to be therapeutic to them if they are going through a hard or difficult time.

8) Offer advice only when asked. Sometimes people just need to vent and are not asking for advice. If you offer advice at this point chances are it will be ignored, however if they ask for advice, be as diplomatic as you can be and instead of saying “Do this” or “Do that”, say “If I were you I would think about doing this or that.” You could also guide the person asking for advice by saying “Maybe you could look into getting help with (whatever their problem is)” or suggest who they might call that could help.

9) Love more. There is just too much hate in the world. Hate will eat you up inside and make you a bitter person. By loving one another we can get much more done to improve the world.

10) Appreciate life. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow isn’t here yet. As the saying goes “carpe diem” or seize the day. Live in the moment. Be thankful for one more day on Earth. It is a blessing not everyone gets. Play more, laugh more, forgive more and try to see the good in everything. Remember every cloud has a silver lining. I could tell you how food poisoning saved my life but that is a story for another time.