Angry? Five Thoughtful Strategies to Be Kind Now

Two twenty-something men strut in to the grocery store, making a beeline for the deli. I can’t blame them, that fried chicken aroma is the Cinnabon of the savory world. And it was lunchtime.

But it doesn’t matter how young and strident and in-a-hurry you are. Wear the dang mask. Or at least if you don’t, refrain from wearing your work logo on a blindingly florescent yellow T-shirt.

Two women are selecting sushi. Then they make their way down several more aisles of the grocery store. We have a mask order in our town.

Somehow, they didn’t get the memo. Hopefully they caught on when they realized everyone else in the store had a face covering on and that they needed to get some dang masks.

My blood was on slow-simmer. C’mon, people, this is not a lot to ask:

Wear the mask!

But then something happened.

A couple weeks later, same grocery store, same time of day (yes, the only place we go these days is the grocery store..), two middle school-aged girls walked in. And you guessed, it: they weren’t wearing masks. Blood starts churning in my vessels, and then:

I see the girls carrying their carefully-selected masks to the checkout.

The day’s special in the deli was a generous helping of humble pie served up with a huge lesson in The School of Assume. And dessert was a rap-on-the-knuckles from the University of Kindness. There’s the saying

Be kind, you don’t know what someone else is going through.

Well, after seeing those young ladies with their masks I took a kinder approach to those not wearing masks:

Maybe those two women were from out of town and didn’t realize the need to mask up.

Maybe those two men worked outside, and had been working together for ages so were in a “quarantine bubble” of sorts. Perhaps they didn’t have masks for those reasons, and felt a quick chicken run, as long as it quick, wouldn’t do any harm.

A recent article posted on yahoo.com spoke to exactly that, being kind to non-mask wearers, and recommended approaching them with curiosity instead of anger. And knowing when to start up a conversation in the first place. The article, entitled It’s Ok to Yell at Strangers Who Don’t Wear Masks is crazy misleading, but incredibly compelling. In fact, the title made an anti-masker friend engage in a rant on FB (proving she never read the article), but without her reflex ability to see red, I would never have seen this helpful article. So thank you, friend:

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/ok-yell-strangers-don-t-134608959.html

The strategies Matt Schneiderman outlines in his inflammatorily-titled article can be extrapolated to other situations, too, for anyone finding their own blood afire. (Mask-opponents upon seeing a legion of people covering up, for example.)

My teenage son barely touched his supper last night. It doesn’t take a pediatrician to note that’s a red flag given the eating habits of a fifteen-year-old boy. He was upset. Upset by federal forces taking people away in Portland. Crimes against Muslims in China. COVID in America. He is angry, sad, worried and….helpless. We talked about how everyone is on edge these days. Whether we agree with their politics or values or other opinions doesn’t matter right now. We need to do our best to just be kind. A little bit of it goes a long way in the best of times. But now? Spread the love. We don’t know what exactly others are going through, but we do know everyone is going through something.