No One Was Watching
I'm sitting outside enjoying a coffee on a recent Saturday morning. It's somewhat idyllic --the coffee place is next to the water which separates my little community from one of the most expensive ZIP Codes in the US. There's a parking lot nearby where locals can park as a benefit of being part of the community. I hear a car struggling to start effectively. It is an older Porsche, but one that has been kitted out with a big spoiler and other adornments that say, “It’s fast”. It is loud, the smoke and fumes reveal that it is not compliant with current air regulations. The struggle persists for several minutes with more choking, restarting and fumes. Finally, it has warmed up enough to be driven out of the parking lot and by my Italian coffee fantasy. It was once fast but now it continues to struggle to regain its former fast car image.
I don't have to be a scientist to know that the smoke and fumes that this little car has deposited in the community, even for a short period of time, cannot be a good thing. There are 100 cars in the parking lot not all of them contribute in this selfish manner. He is one individual in a community of 7000 and that community is in a larger community of seven and one-half million. His desires at this moment are paramount to humanity as a whole. He is not the only one that lives in that manner. Everyone that walks or drives by my coffee moment have their own individual desires. I feel good about myself today because I walked down to get my coffee, but then I think of the people who provided the coffee, they all drove. We all are doing something at the risk of others.
When do we come to understand, no act is truly isolated.? All acts, even isolated ones, carry a public weight. When will we recognize the moment when self-yields to the greater good? At what point will we see that personal freedom and collective responsibility are inseparable?
The larger question for me is what will it take to get humanity to understand that we are all in this together and that thinking about ourselves individually is not beneficial to mankind? Individual hubris isolates us and ignores the need to understand the greater good and that we all need to contribute.
Even when no one is watching…..