What frustrates me most is seeing problems that have obvious solutions. I’m not talking in abstract: these are tangible, every day problems that people are generally just content to do nothing about. Why bother? Why get in a fuss over something so trivial? Because it doesn’t make sense. Here is a problem we can fix and yet we are at ease to just let it go and focus on bigger, more important things. There’s something to be said for that, which is an absolutely healthy attitude, but then there are people like me who just can’t let these petty things go and endlessly frustrate themselves over arguably nothing.

I feel like if we can do something to make a situation better we should do it. Think outside of yourself and consider the other people in your situation: how can we work together to fix this? I’m not an idealist and I don’t live in a fantasy land of kittens and unicorns where everybody gets along, but there are certain tangible things within our grasps that can at the very least make things tolerable. I’m not asking anybody to go out of their way, but to at least try not to be absolutely terrible.

You don’t need to hold a door open for me, but when I do it for you say, “Thank you,” and move along. You don’t even need to mean it, just as I surely did not wish some miraculous kindness on you when I did it. Let’s both just try to maintain some sense of civility around here. Turn down your stereo when you pull up to a stoplight and don’t stomp around in your apartment in the middle of the night. I’m not asking for kidneys here, just that we mutually behave like we live in a society.

Instead I’m constantly hounded by people who are needlessly ignorant, practically to the point of malice. Expecting any level of personal responsibility sometimes seems entirely futile to me, and leads me to endless frustration everywhere I look. Instead of just pointlessly griping about it, the least I can do is explain how we can do things better. How we can strive to be less terrible.

In practice, I don’t think I’m writing this for anybody except myself. Since I often cannot directly solve many of the problems I see, the closest I can get is to offer at least the beginnings of a solution, if for nothing else to satiate my need to “fix” something I perceive as broken. In the end, whether that will qualify as amusing or insightful is neither here nor there, but just maybe could give cause to think twice about something.