Recently on a trip to New York, I was closeted with 50 folks in a huge conference. After tired days of answering numerous and repetitive questions over a period of 2 weeks, I was longing for the last day when I was hoping to pack my bags to another location in the US for another round of sessions.
The day finally arrived. It happened to be a Friday.
I was hurrying up for my meeting while my mind was going over the meeting schedules and the happenings of the past one week.
And I took the lift to my 22-nd floor. There was another gentleman in the lift who had apparently pressed 23. When I had pressed 22 I noticed that he has let out a sigh. Probably he was in a hurry and didn’t expect anybody else but him to be the occupant of the lift.
Once the door closed, I began to think of the days’ proceedings. And was momentarily lost in thoughts.
I heard a not so congenial sound when I noticed that the lifts’ door had opened. But I was still lost in thoughts and didn’t realize that the doors had opened.
The gentleman in tweed suit said, “you pressed 2. Didn’t you?” And his manner was extremely rude.
It just dawned on me that I was staring at the open door without getting out of the lift.
In a jiffy I apologized and exited the lift when I heard him say, “Oh these Asians, what a pain ?”.
He was probably uttering some more words but I couldn’t listen to them as the doors closed by then.
But when I regained my composure, I began to wonder, “why is everyone in a hurry ? And where has the human dignity gone that one takes no time to swear at another without any hesitation? And what is going to happen if you are delayed by a minute ? Why does one not stop to think that the other person who might have been absent minded for a moment could have had a bad day, or might have had some terrible news to break to others or something to that effect?’
Did the swear justify the delay of say 30 seconds ? Or did the 30 second delay in my moving out of the lift deserve such a swear ?
I might never meet the person again in my life. But he has successfully ensured that I carry a wholly negative image of him all through my life.
Amaruvi's Aphorisms 