Today is a Tuesday morning.
I have the air conditioning on, and the door open. Very wasteful, but cool, and with refreshing
clean air. That’s one thing that’s hard
about living in Charleston. Once it
starts getting hot out (now), you have to blast the air conditioning to live
and breathe, and basically never get fresh air, unless you do what I’m doing, and
throw caution to the wind.
I can’t tell you how amazing it’s been driving all the
travelers around for the past year.
Living in a regional place has its perks (cuisine and geography, for
two) but for someone who is not a native, its hard every now and then.
I think we all use what we have to siphon our aggression and
frustration. Meaning if I am a
Southerner and I feel bad, I may from time to time spew some hate about
Northerners. Just because I need
somewhere for my hate to go. It could be
black/white, gay/straight, rich/poor, but I think it’s a quite normal, if not
pretty, human habit.
So for me, a Northerner living in the South, when the
novelty wore off, about four years into it, I started getting slightly annoyed
and even hurt at all the (what seemed) unearned bad feelings coming my way from
the locals. But then I started driving
for Uber (no this is not an advertisement) and I feel normal again.
Yes, there are trillions of people in the world who are not
Southern by birth and this past year I think I’ve met about a third of
them. Hooray!!! And Southerners are probably saying just
leave if you don’t like it. But I do
like it. That’s the thing.
And besides, I think it happens everywhere. Hate.
I think it’s a by-product of frustration. And feeling scared.
Every day I try to, in whatever way I can, limit my own
feelings of frustration and fear, so that I can be a good person, and a generous
person and helpful person. And I look
around me, I see people who are so nice, and I think you know they should be
nice. Look at their lives, look at all
they have, and all they are able to do, there is no reason they should not be
nice, supportive and kind to everyone they meet.
And then I look around and I see people who have nothing and
who are struggling so hard, at every turn, and I wonder how can they be nice to
anyone? Their lives are so hard.
Anyway, for my part, I just try to do the best I can. If I am feeling hateful, I try to think, what
am I frustrated about? What, in me/my
life, can I change. And no change is
never easy, but little by little, it is possible, I have found, to make a
difference.