Respect Other People’s Life as Art
“We are all time travelers moving at the speed of exactly 60 minutes per hour.”
-Spider Robinson
Some of us are traveling in limousines, others are at the freeway on-ramp with cardboard signs. Regardless of the means, we are going from a point a to a point b every day of our lives. It is easy to look at other peoples work and art in life as nonsensical and bad. Have you ever seen a car with a million poorly placed stickers on it and gone: “Why? It is such a nice car.” That is their art and you should respect it. Once we were down at the beach years ago and I was making sand castles with my niece. I saw the remnants of a sand castle with sticks like towers and assumed the creator was long gone. It was in a good spot so I swept it away as if it never existed. I think the creator must have been mentally ill because she came screaming at me and my young niece as if we were the devil for destroying her sand castle. We got through the scene some how and relocated. Luckily it didn’t seem to affect my niece much but I thought about it for weeks after. I really felt bad about it.
The sand castle wasn’t the real lesson here. For me, it was a lesson about other people and respecting the art they create along the journey. My recommendation is to be very slow to criticize the art that people make whether it is their bumper stickers, their sand castles, or … the way they do simple things in life. It never hurts to give compliments, you can find one for anything. Another way to grow in this area: do a listening experiment. I hope the sand castle incident will have the same effect on you as it had on me and make you less reckless with other people’s art and hence other people’s emotions. Just like an effective acne treatment, so your words can help and heal someone struggling.
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Tags: art, life, Love, mental illness, people, respect, sand castles, the Other, traveling
thanks for a thoughtful post. Having just been at the shore, I will certainly think twice before bulldozing someone’s sand castle. But geeze, you made an easy to make mistake. I don’t see how it was, necessarily, disrespect, so much as an assumption that the builder was gone. The overreaction has more to do with her than it has to do with you? maybe?
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Absolutely but how far do we get in life being justified in wrecking someone’s sand castle? Like i said, there was something apparently wrong with the lady but we can learn from her reaction if we apply it to respecting others. Thanks for the comment!
I just adore how you take your life experiences, no matter how big or small, and turn them into stories with a heck of a moral message!
I just thought of that bumper sticker thing yesterday when I saw a brand new car bumper covered in them and shook my head. I still cant imagine why anyone would do that, but you’re right, it’s their art and their message and I should respect it instead of wondering why.
Great post!
Thanks. Some things when they happen to you are tailored made to be shared and extrapolated … this was definitely one of those.
in another post, you talked about mantras that can help you get through life.
looking at my brother (the guy next to me on the bus, the old geezer who cuts me off in traffic, the young immigrant who sits beside me in the library …) and thinking, “art!” - what a beautiful way to walk through life.
thank you.
i am so glad i met you in this here blogosphere.
isabella moris last blog post..lazy vacation