Too, Well, Too

Things connect, and cascade. When a person is stressed, overburdened, working too much, not in control of much—that person is less tolerant, less considerate, of others. And so the person who needs a kind gesture doesn’t get one, the person who needs to get out of the parking lot can’t, the person who needs a friendly voice, to feel connected, receives only silence. And then that person transmits it along. And so it magnifies and extends throughout, a perverse butterfly effect. There is a price to be paid for our maniacal pace, our relentless push. This is a disconnected or mal-connected society with too great an emphasis on individualism or solely the nuclear family, and it is also a society where the fruits of labor often either never come or are withheld by economic, political, and social powers. We can mask it in various forms of escape or denial, but that does not change the reality. It is a subject for conversation perhaps we should have with and amongst ourselves.