I was walking toward the library one day, intent on writing a research paper. The guy ahead of me passed through the door, then turned to hold it open for me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem,” he responded. Then, as if in a movie, he looked right into my eyes and said, almost in a whisper, “Just pass it on.”
He walked away, but I stayed there in the doorway, confused. Just pass it on? I thought. Wait a second here, did I miss something?
The guy held open the door for me, and then acted as if he’d donated a kidney. Can we get any more dramatic? Get over yourself man.
Before more sarcasm, let me make one thing clear. I appreciate people who do nice things for other people. We should all do more fund-raising, protesting, and hold more doors for people. But sometimes, I think we take ourselves a little too seriously.
I have a few friends who are vegetarian. Although that does not appeal to me at all (remember my bear meat-eating habit?), I respect them for sticking by an ideal. For the most part, they are pretty cool about the whole thing. They go with me to restaurants that serve meat without making a scene, they bring veggie burgers to my barbecues, and they even joke about wishing they could go back to their old, flesh-eating ways.
One of my friends, however, needs to get a grip.
“I just think that we, as a human race, have evolved beyond eating meat,” she once told me.
Evolved? They must have given me the wrong set of teeth then, because I still have my flesh-tearing canines intact. I guess I should go back to my Cro-Magnon cave.
This kind of snarky superiority, cloaked in humanitarian sentiment, is annoying, and it undermines the true goodwill innate in us. We need to get over ourselves sometimes.
Keep doing good things. Stay true to your noble causes. Hold the door for me if you see me. But if your cause is just a way to prop yourself up, in the end it’s only going to let you down.
Amen Brotha!