Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out.  Col 4:6 (Message)

Have you ever noticed how busy everyone is nowadays! Either we are on our cell phones or our landlines or in serious discussions with other serious people. We can become so focused on the goals we’re trying to reach that sometimes we can’t see the people around us.

It isn’t just the father who works late at the office and doesn’t get to see much of his family, or the mother who is so busy taking care of the house that she doesn’t notice when the kids suddenly become quiet (usually a first sign that trouble is brewing!) It’s also when I’m talking to a friend, and someone walks by that needs to hear something from me. I’m busy talking with Mary and Fred walks by and I need to tell him to turn off the sprinkler, so the grass isn’t overwatered; and so I stop talking with Mary to pass the information to Fred. As soon as I turned back to Mary, I realized that I somehow thought the state of my yard was more important than my friendship.

I read somewhere that the population density in Japan is so high that they have found ways to create personal spaces around each one. It seems that they have community baths and the people who go there have developed the skill of only seeing their own families – not the other people. I think the same thing must happen in the subways of large cities. There are so many people on those subways that they need to learn how to tune everyone out.  

What a sad way to live. In a way, it’s like saying that all these other people don’t have any right to live in your space. If we don’t acknowledge the right for them to exist, why would they acknowledge the right for us to exist?

Manners, I think, were created to help grease the wheels of human interaction. A quiet “please” and “thank you” can go a long way to relieving hostility in the air. There’s also the saying, “It’s easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar!” A smile is much nicer to see than a frown.

So many of us have been beaten down for so long, it’s probably a good time to start building people up. It wouldn’t take much. I used to work for a large pension company with clients across the country. I discovered (by accident) that the best way to disarm an unhappy client was to admit a mistake I had made and to get it corrected. Many people were expecting to hear denials over the situation, and they didn’t know what to do when I agreed with them. It didn’t take long to correct the error, and everyone was much happier at the end of the transaction. Something to think about!

Becky Gillette is a former teacher, newspaper reporter, and preacher who seeks to take an original approach to life’s lessons. She has recently published her first book, Jessie’s Corner: Something To Think About, which is now available for purchase. Based on several lesser-known scriptures from the Bible, this is a collection of articles which she wrote for a weekly newspaper.