I met a woman in the shower. It was a communal shower at the gym. We had both finished swimming around the same time and she started her shower shortly before I got there. When she saw me approach, she immediately explained why she had four shower heads running when she was only using one.
“The temperature is too hot. If I run the hot water on three other showers, then mine gets to the temperature that I like.”
When I suggested that she use mine instead where she could get the temperature that she wanted, she continued, “I figure that it’s okay because I don’t have kids. If I came with kids they would have used the other showers.”
What a sense of entitlement and wastefulness at the expense of others! We live in New Mexico where there is a culture of conserving water. My guests know that I have a rule: only use the water that you need. No running water while you are doing something else.
It made me think of the ways that we make excuses for our decisions, especially when we sense that we have not acted from integrity and truth. Years ago I knew someone who was deliberating on whether or not to buy her newly-driving son a car. She and her husband finally decided to get him a car. Why? Because it was not his fault that they brought him up in a community where many of the families could afford to buy their children a car. That was the WORST rationale! The audacity of that thinking stayed with me for years.
We don’t want to foster entitlement, greed or guilt in our decisions. Our actions affect others in our small circles and in the periphery. We need to take responsibility for our choices and live up to a higher standard.
Oh my good grief. There are no words for this kind of greedy, thoughtless behavior. On a daily basis, I am feeling appalled by people’s behavior and attitudes in a way that I never expected to be by the year 2017.
Thank you for continuing to be a beacon of light, Elllie.