The Old Blog in the Desert

I’ve lost a little more faith in humanity. That seems to happen in tiny spoonfuls, like someone sneaking up behind me with a teaspoon and dipping into my heart when I’m not looking. It doesn’t make a big hole all at once, but soon you notice the pile of teaspoons missing.

It was nothing dramatic—no wars, no scandals, no lightning bolt from the heavens, just people. Regular people forgetting they were regular. You know the type—walking around as if the sun comes up in the morning only because they signed off on it.

Now, my mom and dad raised me on some simple truths. The kind you can stitch on a pillow if you’re crafty. “We all put our pants on the same way, one leg at a time.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve tried it the other way—both legs at once—and it doesn’t work. You fall flat on your face and feel silly, which is, come to think of it, a good reminder of what pride usually does to people.

Mom and Dad also told me something else: “More money doesn’t make you a better person.”

And if you’ve lived long enough, you know how right they were. I’ve seen a man with a shiny new car honk his horn at a little old lady in a crosswalk. I’ve also seen a fellow with a beat-up pickup truck stop to help a stranger push a stalled vehicle off the road.

The trouble is, somewhere along the line, folks forget that a title or a bank account doesn’t mean squat. You can be a CEO or a janitor, but when you cut your finger, the blood looks the same shade of red.

When your time is up, no amount of zeroes in your ledger buys you another day. Death has no discrimination, and life shouldn’t either.

That’s the part that gets me. We’re all just travelers passing through.

None of us gets to stay. And yet, some people act as if they own the road and everyone else is just in the way.

Here’s how I see it: we are all here to serve. Not to serve ourselves, but each other.

And it doesn’t have to be grand. Holding a door, listening without interrupting, giving someone the benefit of the doubt—these are little kindnesses, but they stack up taller than the grandest house money can build.

So why the power trips? Why the swollen egos, the puffed-out chests, the insistence that my title makes me better than you?

Friend, your oversized ego won’t fit in a coffin, and your job title won’t be on your tombstone. All that survives you is the way you treated people.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather get remembered as kind than as rich, humble than significant. And I think deep down, even the ones riding high on their own fumes want that too, but they forget.

So, I’ll try not to lose all my faith in humanity. Maybe just a teaspoon here and there. Because for every arrogant soul who thinks the world revolves around them, I’ve met ten quiet, ordinary folks who remind me why it doesn’t.

And tomorrow morning, we’ll all do the same thing—stick one leg, then the other, into our pants. Same as always. And perhaps that thought will bring us all back down to where we belong.

Being kind and humble is the only uniform we all look good in.