Good Evening, Everyone:

May All of You Have A Most Blessed Week!

While in the process of doing my errands, I caught the bus and stepped right into the middle of an ongoing argument between an elderly woman and a very young man.  Unfortunately, the hostilities were so great between these two that our bus driver had to pull over to the side and intervene.  When I initially boarded the bus, I sat behind the young man, in question, but decided to move in order to avoid being caught in the middle of a possible physical altercation. 

I don’t know what set the elderly woman off, but she seemed to rather dislike the young man because he had a shaven head and was tattooed.  From his looks, she automatically assumed he was “a gang banger” who did not merit any respect.  She was constantly turning around and verbally putting him down which was not necessary. Quite naturally, the young man, verbally shot insults back at her.  Personally, I was in no mood for such drama on a Sunday afternoon and chose to get off the bus much sooner than I originally planned.

Less than an hour later, I ran into that same young man at a major transfer point on the bus route.  He seemed rather nice and explained to me what happened.  He could not understand what was going on with the elderly woman who was harassing him.  He asked me for my assessment of the situation.  I simply told him that she was probably suffering from some form of dementia and her reasoning faculties were not the best.  I also advised him not to engage such people because if the police were forced to intervene, they would more than likely arrest him as opposed to “the whack job” causing the problem.  When a person falls into a category of people who are ruthlessly profiled by law enforcement officials, it always much better to avoid as much unnecessary drama as possible. You could be “minding your own business” and “trying to live a quiet life” and get waylaid due to prejudice.

Being an African American woman, I can relate to how this young man felt.  Nobody likes being needlessly insulted,especially minorities; however, there are times when you as the victim must take the “higher moral road”.  There will be times when you encounter people who don’t live by the Golden Rule, which states that “you do unto other as you would have them do unto you”.  In these tough economic times, you are going to see more and more people throwing their morality “under the bus” in an effort to stay afloat.  If it’s to their advantage to trample your feeling and keep stepping, they will.  In many of these instances, retaliation will only serve to plunge you into deeper trouble. 

I have always derived a great deal of comfort in knowing “what goes around comes around”.  When people do bad things, bad things shall happen to them when they least expect or need them.  It’s called the Law of KARMA.  No one is immune to it.  GOD’s creation is no respecter of persons and by observing “the Golden Rule”, we can mitigate its’ effects.  I was raised to be nice to everyone because you may never know when you’re entertaining angels.  Just a few kind words from a stranger have made my day.  Who knows, you may even save a life!

May Peace Be With All of You,