Drought Conditions

"Human kindness is overflowing and I think it's going to rain today." 

(Randy Newman)

Well, it's not raining today. In fact, it hasn't rained in days, weeks, months, perhaps years. People, we are in a drought.  And the conditions of this drought are not improving but getting worse.  Without kindness we are dried up.  And there is no human kindness that overflows any longer. Oh sure, we have small pockets from time to time and the brief spurts of massive human kindness but overall? Drought conditions. Dry as a desert riverbed.

Think I am exaggerating? Take a drive.  Yes, that's what I said.  Take a drive.  Get in your car and drive while the roads are fairly populated, maybe even during a rush hour.  Observe the behaviors of other drivers. Which do you see?  People giving each other space to switch lanes or people speeding up so the gaps are closed and there is no space to switch? People entering the interstate in merge fashion or racing with those already on the interstate for the spot "up front"? Drive into a parking lot. Which do you see?  People racing for the closest spot, cutting off others and driving in the wrong direction just to get the spot that is 5 feet closer to the door than the other open spot or people willing to let someone else have the closer-by-5-feet spot because it's just not that big of a deal?

Still not convinced?  Okay how about this.  Common courtesies like holding the door open for someone, smiling at people, helping someone cross the street who may be physically challenged or elderly, picking up something that the person in front of you dropped and returning it to them, and other simple things have stopped becoming courtesies and are considered "random acts of kindness."  Those should be things practiced, or lived out, every day!  They are courtesies not things that should be considered out of the ordinary and therefore random.

I believe that our drought conditions started when the common courtesies stopped being common and became random.  And with the decline of courtesy, human kindness dried up.  It became everyone for themselves and if there is a spare minute and if I feel like it I may help you out.  But not too much or else people will think they can take advantage of me.  Oh friends, human kindness has dried up.  Our drought conditions are manifested in lines at stores, traffic on the roads, office relationships, customer service instances, personal relationships, social media conversations. And then it snowballs and manifests in situations like the recent shooting in Ferguson, or any other of the tragic situations that happen way too often.

The only way to reverse the drought conditions is to saturate the dried up spirits we have and we see in others with purposeful kindness, with reinstating common courtesies that are common once again and not random.  Kindness lived is the rain that solves the drought condition of our souls.