-Make courtesy common again

For years we’ve been hearing about how our society is less civil than it used to be. It seems true to me. Shouting at each other has been glorified. I think that started decades ago when CNN started “Crossfire” and now it has evolved into Michael Moore and Bill O’Reilly, neither of whom I can bear to watch because they are so haughty, self-righteous, and just plain rude.

Life is not a baseball game, and civil discourse, even when we don’t agree, should not degenerate into trash talk.

Lack of civility shows up in smaller ways, too. Common courtesies are not so common any more. For instance:

• RSVP’ing. Send out invitations to anything, and the numbers of folks responding yea or nay will be slim.  A recent conversation with a woman who entertains a lot confirmed this. You’ll have to get on the phone and call people to get any kind of idea how many guests to expect.
• Responding at all. Emails to some people seem to get sucked into the Internet equivalent of the lost-sock stargate in your dryer. A quick “got your note. Thanks for thinking of me” would at least acknowledge the sender’s existence. (I’m not talking about mass forwards, understand. No one expects a response to those – well, other than to forward to ten of your closest friends, and I won’t do that. End of the line.)
• Thank you notes. Shock the socks off your grandmother. Drop her a line, or even call her just to say thank you for the check in your birthday card. While you’re at it, if you’ve just interviewed for a job, send the interviewer a thank you note, even if you weren’t hired.

All parts of life work better when we nurture connections with people. Courtesy does this. Occasionally we need to sever connections with someone for good reason, but the world is full of people who deserve our respect, too. That needs to be our  default.

Seems to me British clergyman and novelist Laurence Sterne had it right centuries ago when he wrote, “Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners.”

Carol Willis is a freelance writer and editor. She specializes in written communications for businesses and nonprofits and other editorial projects.