Ambuscade

We’re not superheroes. At least, I’m not. I don’t know about you.

This probably isn’t news. You spend your days being pushed around either by people or by circumstance. Some days you feel lucky when nobody at all notices you, at least for a little while. I’m right there with you, this whole week was like that.

Still, we’re more powerful than we think we are.

Yes, you are.

For example, right now you have the power to hurt my feelings.

Sure, it’s not flying, or invulnerability or even talking to fish. But it’s actually quite lot of power, and I probably don’t even know you.

I’m not kidding, by the way.

Total strangers can, randomly without reason, throw contempt at you and rattle you down to your bones. It can be just a look or a word, but it stings. Oh, you recover. You’re not stupid, you know it’s meaningless, but for a minute there, it stung.

You know when people do it to you. Do you know when you do it to other people? Do you know when you’re stressed or pissed off or really tired and somebody gets in your face or even just slows you down and you lob a shot of scorn at them?

Most of the time I bet you don’t. The stress or the anger or the fatigue is too big, smaller stuff just slides off. Other people, by definition in this context, are smaller stuff, just like we sometimes feel like smaller stuff.

There’s a flip side to this. Good things can be done to make a good difference. (Bam! You’ve been ambushed by a pep talk. Don’t go, I’m almost done.)

Someone held a door for me today. Yeah, it’s puny. It’s not a transfusion or organ donation. But you know what? It mattered. I was in a bad place in my head and someone waited an extra few seconds for me to get to the door. With a smile, like it wasn’t annoying.

In the midst of being around people we wouldn’t choose to be around, of being disliked for no good reason, of all the tiny discourtesies that pile up when you’re in a society, in the midst of all that there are glimmers. Bits of courtesy, the occasional kindness.

It’s powerful stuff. Maybe more people should wear capes.

In any case, it’s better than talking to fish.