Welcome to Ideothetic Flow! A passion project sharing my reflections on life, being a better person and building a kinder world.
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Hi!
A rant has been building up in me for some time. Now that Joy is toilet trained, planning diaper changes is replaced with a new problem, finding clean public toilets.
To be fair, there are more than enough cubicles in Singapore that I can always find something acceptable. But, the rate at which I need to reject cubicles makes me wonder, how could so many people have so little regard for the next person. I understand that accidents happen once in awhile, but I quite doubt all these are accidents.
It is probably best that I skip the details in case you happen to be reading this over a meal. Singaporeans reading this likely have a good idea of what I am talking about anyway.
The most troubling part of this is that, in this scenario, being considerate costs almost nothing, one simply needs to be willing to take a little care.
This is merely one example of how as an entire society, we could do better. Over the course of each day its easy to spot many other instances where it seems like people are not being thoughtful about others. I don’t dare to claim I am perfect in this regard, I surely do many things that have inconvenienced someone else.
For many of us in this country, it really is not an issue that we don’t have the time to be considerate. Just a few weeks ago people had time to queue up for hours for unlimited edition Swatch watches, revealing an uglier side of our world.
I worry that society is increasingly adopting an individualistic mindset that taking care for others is the realm of those who are paid or incentivised to do so. Coming back to this Swatch incident, there was a video of someone demanding “service recovery”, of angry customers telling the business all the ways they should have thought about them. When we expect those whom we pay to have thought of everything for us, does it conversely mean that we do not need to think of those who don’t pay us anything?
I am reminded of a link a shared 3 posts ago:
Hurry Slowly - Miki Kashtan - Aliveness and Flow
This shared an interesting perspective about money. Whenever we exchange something for money, the encounter ends and the flow of energy between people is cut off. We can go about our lives without caring about the other person again. The speaker gives an example of giving a stranger some mulberries to try, and the stranger wanted to pay her for them. In doing so, the “debt” is repaid, and there is no need to go further. While there are many benefits to money and the ability to transact in this way, I felt its important we also recognise that there are other forms of relationship and exchange between people.
What if the problem of money goes further, that the payment of money does not simply end the transaction, but now creates an expectation that you must go out of your way for me because I had paid you.
I’m not sure how to reconcile this against the act of payment also being considerate in its own way. I helped a friend mail a letter a few days ago, and he wanted to pay me back for the stamp, a negligible cost. Yet that offer of repayment was still important, as a symbolic representation of the desire to treat a friend well and recognise the effort in the favor.
Maybe that answer does not matter anyway. What really matters is for the world to be one where everyone is a little more considerate. I hang on to a belief that this would be a much better world to live in.
So, I invite you to try and expand your zone of consideration. If you can, set aside some energy to think about how something in your daily life might make trouble for someone else, and take the effort to change it. If you change a habit or usual behavior as a result, please write to me and share.
Other things…
Collaborative fund - Why complexity sells
One of my troubles with working in the legal profession is that I feel we make things overly complex. I’ve always felt insecure whenever writing something that is too short, or too simple. Indeed there have been many times that my work was criticized exactly for looking too simple. I revisit this essay often, to remind myself to hold my ground, to reassure myself away from the urge to try and lengthen things.
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Take care and have a good week!
James