These Difficult Times

THE STAIRWELL

Funny thing happened to me on my way to work last week: I saw the fabric of civilization tearing apart at the seams. What calamity did I witness? What insanity took hold over the populace? It was several commuters walking down the subway stairwells with their umbrellas still open — yeah, that's right — open. In the stairwell.

Now, you might not see this as a meaningful thing — just a few people trying to stay dry, but there were a lot of other people on the staircase too. Why would people descend or ascend a narrow subway staircase with their umbrellas fully-open, not even closed just a little bit? Well, to keep any rain from falling upon their perfect heads, of course. Apparently these days, one mustn't get one drop of it on one's expensive coiffs. It just isn't done.

The problem is that there are oftentimes other people on the stairwells, sometimes throngs of other people, and when a select few decide that a drop of rain upon their hairdos is simply more than they can bear, well, ladies and gentlemen, we've got a little problem.

If you haven't walked along the streets of New York City while its raining, you might not realize the magnitude of peril that umbrellas actually represent; the situation can be more dangerous than you'd think. Here's what I mean: Thousands upon thousand of people are trying to get to their jobs without getting soaked, and many of them use umbrellas. But a lot of people, while they innocently ambulate about, are not conscious of how lethal those little metal spikes are, the ones mounted upon the rim of their umbrellas. Major eye-pokage. Especially if the umbrella carrier is short; then the spikes are aimed right at your eye. Boink! Ah! My eye!

So, there it is: people staying dry at the cost of other's safety.

THE HEART OF THE ISSUE: THE SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT

The phenomena of Not-One-Drop-Of-Rain-On-My-Hair implies something rather sinister: a Me-First mindset, one oriented purely toward selfishness. The significance of this mindset, I believe, is it implies a deep-seated relationship with culture that is, in general, that of the victim. Many people have been forced to take the position that they are the entitled-person because they believe, secretly and innerly, that they have no control over their own lives, that they lack what is called "agency".

"Agency" in this context means having power, having control, having an effect, or, in other words, mattering. They feel they are not "agents," that they do not matter or are not players on the playing field. They believe they are merely spectators, and when people feel they lack power, they react by feeling over-entitled to behave in strange ways and start doing all sorts of annoying things, like opening their umbrellas in the stairwell.

In situations such as these, an important metaphor surrounding all of this business begins to take shape: We Are Entitled To Be Dry.

There are four elements to this metaphor:

• the rain (the difficulty)
• the umbrella (the tool)
• the umbrella-carrier (the tool-user)
• those of us walking around the umbrella-carrier who are without umbrellas (the sufferers of both the difficulty and effects of the tool), and
• the stairwell (the location)

The rain, as the difficulty, represents all the outside forces that we cannot control, prevent, or otherwise are bothered by. And, to reduce the irritation the rain causes, we use umbrellas. They keep us dry, they keep us from getting wet, they keep us from getting uncomfortable. Umbrellas, in turn, are tools that come to symbolize our clever instinct for self-protection (which by the way is only a few shades away from raw, unadulterated selfishiness).

Clearly it makes sense to use umbrellas when it's raining. But is it ethical to use them in narrow staircases? The umbrellas then metaphorically acquire symbolic meaning communicating that I-am-entitled-to-use-this-tool, and I will not get wet at any cost, no matter where I am, no matter where it might be inappropriate.

The victim mindset assumed by people without agency is revealed by their excessive sense of entitlement, which is the central symptom of this malady. But give people agency or make them feel that agency is available in their lives, and you can subside the bad behavior which is so symptomatic of entitlement. You will, metaphorically speaking, reduce the swelling.

A CALL FOR GRACE: OUR ONLY ANTIDOTE FOR THE OVER-ENTITLED

We are in an epidemic of umbrella-behavior: SUVs on the highways, delicate retirement plans that are dependent upon publicly-traded stocks, corporations controlling the governments of third-world nations for their cheap factory labor. Perhaps this type of behavior is part of a greater, cyclical pattern whose pendulum is now at the side of one of its swings. Or perhaps it is a symptom of modern society in general, a constant. We may never know its cause.

But the message of this mindset is the same, no matter the context, no matter the economic scale, no matter the cause: Screw everyone, all-of-it-for-me-and-me-alone! I'm not getting wet!

One solution to this issue is that we allow our own rage to get the better of us, and shout at these people simply to gain our own sense of relief. But what would happen then? Will we then assume the dominant role as the inflictor of embarassment and just make matters worse because they have already secretly assumed the submissive role of victim?

Another solution is that we can talk to the over-entitled people. But it's often impossible to do so — they're not within earshot; we don't have their phone numbers or email address; they're cocooned within an SUV or isolated within a corporate office-building. But even if we could engage them in conversation, would it be worth it? Would the outcome be too unpredictable? And furthermore, do we have the time and energy?

The end result of all of this is that these people, and the situation they cause, come to represent difficulties for the rest of us. They are obstacles that we must overcome. The type of difficulty the over-entitled people of the world come to represent to us is an insidious one: the thing which simply must be tolerated. What this means is that we must then tolerate these people, as I had to in the staircase. And we do this with an attribute of character called Grace.

Grace is the ability to deal with difficulties with a fluid and stabile attitude, it connotates the ability to adapt and flex within changing situations, but most importantly Grace connotates tolerance

How do we acquire grace? By embracing difficulties for what they are: they are opportunities to overcome, they opportunities to feel satisfied. When you view difficulties in this context, you become graceful; you acquire grace.