This time out, for a change, I'm not going to go on about education. But I'm sure teachers are getting the blame for this issue. What am I on about? Let me tell you.
Why is it ok (in fact, it would seem preferable) these days to be rude? And loud? And not care what anybody thinks? I know I was raised in a different era and some things do have to change, and often for the better, but some things which were important then are still important now. Let me give this a context.
I was in the local shopping centre recently and there was a young mother sat on the bench, with her child in a buggy, shouting into her phone. I gathered from what she was shouting that she was talking to the father of her child. The basic content of her tirade was that he was a useless dad and she could manage without him. Well, nothing wrong with that. Plenty of us single parents have raised children we're proud of without any help from their fathers. So what was wrong with what I saw? It wasn't just that she was shouting. She was shouting with a foul mouth. In front of her child (to the father of that child) she was yelling obscenities at the top of her voice in a public place. Her anger and apparent frustration were also making her look like one of Shakespeare's witches. Now, people who know me know I'm no prude. I have been known to swear on the odd occasion. But I certainly never swore in front of my children when they were small. I still don't swear in front of people who don't know me. And I would certainly never swear at the top of my voice in public. Unless maybe someone was murdering me.
So why has this incident led me to write another blog post? Because I see this as symptomatic of a general breakdown in the standards of our society. Why didn't she care what everyone else thought of her? Why didn't she have any consideration for the other people around her, just going about their normal business? I think because most people only care about themselves nowadays. We've all seen other people try (or even tried ourselves) to intervene in these sorts of situations. And all we get for our troubles is threatened, or a mouthful of abuse.
Where was her dignity? Where was her self-respect? Don't get me wrong, if he deserved a mouthful she was right to give it to him. But there's a time and a place, surely? Or isn't there any more? I was brought up not to 'wash my dirty laundry in public' and that was very public. Couldn't she (shouldn't she) have had that conversation later when no one else was listening? Why is it ok for everyone to see us when we are at our very worst? Why are we happy to share even our most personal and intimate moments with the whole world?
But this isn't just about that girl and her lack of personal awareness. We've all seen examples of young women so drunk they can't stand in their heels behaving in ways which should be reserved for the privacy of a bedroom. Did all those brave women who fought to give me the right to vote, fight to give women the right to behave however they like? Did all those women who struggled to give us equality struggle so that we could behave like (or even worse than) men? Timothy Leary once said 'Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition'. I think he meant we should strive to be better. Not just better than men but better human beings.
Perhaps we need to take a step back from this very open, public, access-all-areas life we all seem to lead. Perhaps Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc shouldn't be used to share every private moment of our lives. Perhaps we should think twice about how the world sees us. Perhaps more people should have had the role model I had: a strong, independent woman who managed to be that and to remain dignified and lady-like. Because of her, I still care how other people view me and I hope I always will.
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