Love to Learn, Learn to Love.

JuicyLesson #73: To the selfish and inconsiderate, stop fucking up my world

Selfish people really bug the shit out of me. You know the kind. They don’t stop at stop signs; they just roll on through, so as not to have to wait their turn at a four way stop. Then when you confront them if given the opportunity to do so, most of the time, like ninety percent of the time, they just bullshit you. You are polite, asking them why they didn’t come to a full stop and all you get in return is double talk, pure and simple. These jerks are too self-involved to even consider apologizing except once and I’ll get to that in a second. First I just wanna say that if I ever become that self-centred, I want someone to shoot me. Dead.

Anyway, one time, the one time that I can remember right now anyway, happened a few months ago in the Snowdon area of Montreal. I arrived at my stop slightly ahead of the other driver only to have him slow down and then speed up to beat me. I was going straight and he turned left. So I ended up behind him and got the chance to talk to this guy when he pulled over to park. I came up beside him, rolled down my window and asked him why he had not stopped.

Not following what I have discovered to be standard operating procedure in these situations, this gentlemen didn’t deny what he had done, instead mumbling something about coming from Ontario as if that should have had a bearing on the issue at hand. (His car did have Ontario plates, a totally irrelevant variable given the situation. What was he hoping to achieve by mentioning that he was from Ontario? To distract me, perhaps.)

But I, not being that easily distracted, said something to the effect that the traffic laws, as far as I knew, were the same there as here. When you arrive at a stop sign first, you have the right of way. At this point, both the gentleman and his passenger were smiling and I could see that here was a gentleman with a sense of humour, a man who had acted selfishly, probably because he hadn’t been thinking. No excuse for that kind of behaviour because if one behaves himself as a matter of course, then one will automatically do the right thing.

I can hear you all saying “is this guy (me) fucking nuts? What’s the freaking difference? It’s such a small thing so why does Jerry get so upset by it?” Well let me tell you. The kind of inconsiderate and self-absorbed behaviour behind the wheel that has been described here carries on to other aspects of life which I will eventually get around to discussing. Hopefully today.

Let me say at this point that I simply told the guy from Ontario to apologize and after a momentary hesitation, not a long pause but one that was definitely evident, he did so. I then said that I would be on my way but I just wanted to say before splitting that he should be careful in future and make the effort to avoid this type of behaviour. Nice guy. I hope he took my advice.

I hate inconsiderate behaviour as well as bullshit – anyone who knows me will tell you that.

As I was saying an inconsiderate and selfish attitude in the minutiae of life like not stopping at that stop sign so you can beat someone out of a fucking intersection – why? What’s the point? Two seconds which if you do it often enough might end up saving the guilty party a whole five minutes? When you think about it – which people who behave badly obviously do not – it ain’t worth it…or is it? Let’s just say that I don’t think that saving a few minutes is worth shit, in terms of pissing people like me off and the bad karma that ensues as a result of this grievous kind of behaviour.

Not that people who offend in these areas know, understand, care about or believe in something as spiritual as karma. They are far too materialistic to allow karma to be a consideration in how they live their lives or to govern their behaviour. Well, I’ve got some bad news for the ignorant among us: regardless of whether you know it or believe it or not, karma will affect and effect your lives in ways your narrow minds cannot conceive. For the moment, go ahead and Google it.

Or does not stopping completely when this is legally required stem from another more sinister motivation than the simple goal of saving a few secs as far as the perpetrators are concerned? Is it a matter of aggression against other human beings, one’s brothers and sisters as it were? I see a guy almost challenging me on the road and instead of thinking what the fuck, I decide to beat him out of the intersection, that sonuvabitch. This is where the real trouble starts.

I want to finish off a point I left hanging and then I gotta go.
I said that I may overact in some peoples’ eyes to what even I describe as the details of life, the minutiae of our existence; the question is why? Why do I take these supposedly small things so seriously and why do I go all “Jerry Cohen” (thanks, Ez and I haven’t taken the time yet to view your doc, the one that you passed me on the Herzl Clinic but I intend to, & soon.) on those perps? What is the reason for my viewing it as my duty to teach others how they should live? Well, first, it’s because an inconsiderate and aggressive attitude underlying self-absorbed behaviour on the road definitely extends into all elements of the lives of the kinds of pigs we are discussing, and make no mistake about it, they are pigs. (“Have you seen the little piggies in their starch white shirts…and for all these little piggies, life is getting worse.”) Second it’s due to the fact that they are fucking up the world in which we all live – and that includes me.

I believe that you are the way you behave, the way you behave reflects who you are, and that you can’t turn your character on and off. Lie in business and you become a liar in all aspects of life. Be selfish, aggressive and irresponsible in one element of your life – behind the wheel for example – and you are also selfish, aggressive and unwilling to take responsibility for your actions in the totality of your pathetic and hypocritical little lives and I don’t give a flying fuck what kind of car you drive, where or in what you live, what you do to make money and how much you make. Those details are the real minutiae of our lives and together don’t amount to a hill of beans as long as we have what to eat, where to live and what to wear.

You can take solace in the above-mentioned what I call “trappings” of life all you want but what does it all mean in the end. The most that I can come up with for you to grab hold of is I don’t know what it all means in the end.

I will continue this in Tuesday’s JuicyLesson beginning with other manifestations of the types of negative behaviours I began talking about today as well as explaining why these behaviours are more dangerous than the effects of merely leaving a four-way stop intersection before it’s your turn to do so.

Peace.

2 Comments

  • Jase B. says:

    Watch out for the corner of Einstein and Guelph no one drives or leads a considerate life there! (Besides me, especially with my cute kiddies in their car seats in the backseat!)

    Live & Love.

    • Jerry Cohen says:

      Hi Jase,
      Thanks. There’s also the corner of Guelph and Westminster to worry about. I once saw two people parked just west of that intersection, on Guelph. They were there, one facing in one direction and one facing in the other, just chatting, blocking my way. I gave them a few seconds and then I honked, gently, only to get the finger in return.

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