I just got off an international flight, and to me, airports had always been like they’re summed up in “Love Actually”
“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.”
Today, it seemed like everywhere I looked, read, or listened - it was the exact opposite.
From the lady berating the check in counter girl for the plane being late (cause, you know, she controls that stuff), to the angry couple exasperatedly arguing over who’s job it was to have remembered the phone charger, to almost all the news I read in the paper in the lounge, to the angry email I got from a talent who’d forgotten to cancel their monthly membership saying they were going to “tell everyone what a bad person you are and give us a 1 star google review if you don’t give in to my demands” (golly, happy Tuesday!)
What happened to us? When did we all get so… angry? So spiteful? So disillusioned that it gives us some sort of feeling of control by trying to make someone else experience our frustration and pain by hurting them too?
When I got back to my hood (Potts Point), saying good morning to the old lady I always pass on the way to my coffee shop, sharing morning banter with my barista at Room 10, acknowledging all the junkies coming home from their adventures, before going to the convenience store across the road to get my newspaper from Hassam who always throws in a little home made baklava on the weekend. And you know what? It makes me feel awesome. Not the baklava (well, that too) but the basic giving and receiving of kindness.
Now that I sound like some sort of Ghandi type who walks around in a perennial state of bliss, lets just clear that up. Im far from perfect. I have my rants after being on hold for 45min with Telstra, or when I cant get my new mobile to synch my contacts, or when Oracle lied to my CTO. Sometimes I’m tired, I’ve spent all day giving the best of me to my clients, my talent, my team, and I just don’t know if I have it in me to listen to my building managers review of last nights AFL game..
Then I realise how f*cking lucky I am to have a building manager who actually checks in on me, notices if I’m working late too often and reminds me to take care of myself. That my mood should not dictate my manners. I dont always get it right. It’s a practice. And I only got here by realising by holding on to anger I was losing twice - the person I was angry at was blissfully unaware of my ‘suffering’ (Tim Cook wasnt losing sleep over my contact synch, lets be clear), and the only person that I was hurting, was me. So not only had I had to deal with whatever the shitty situation was (al la ear on fire listening to hold music while rage grinding my teeth…), I then got the double whammy joy of being all f*cking angry about it for hours. Definitely lost twice.
So I’d ask, given the current climate (literally and figuratively), with people losing their lives and livelihoods in Ukraine, with the shocking stories from Epstein, Weinstein, et al coming to light, to the bushfires and continued lack of indigenous health equality; could we maybe just be a little bit kinder? To one another? And use all that energy, emotion, passion, frustration, to a cause that’s going to leave our society, our planet, our economy in a better place?
The next time the baby in front of you in the supermarket line is losing its sh*t, help amuse it. Someone tries to cut in in traffic? Let them. Mum asks you for the 50th time to show her how those ‘disappearing photos’ (lets be honest, its a better name than instagram stories) work? Show her, again.
See how it feels. I think you might just find you kind of like it. Social good smugness looks hot on you.
And if your struggling with what to do with all that spare time you have now that you’re not being pissed off, leaving spiteful google reviews, yelling at your partner or sending angry emails, check out some of these very worthy organisations you can donate your time to: