Opus 2025-279: On the Street: Do They Wave Back?

I’ve gotten into the habit of trying to at least appear to be friendly.  When I’m out walking, I will greet people with a “Good morning” .  As cars drive by I will wave to the drivers and since I’m on the road and they’re coming straight at me, I can see that they respond with a vague wave of their own.

It’s a bit more uncertain when viewed from my porch.  Every time a car goes by as the poor working classes drive to their jobs I greet them with a jaunty wave.  I sometimes wonder if they wave back.  I wonder if they even see me if it’s dark enough.  Add to that the fact that I’m looking through the side window, which is usually tinted in someway so I can’t see them.  I don’t know if I’m wasting my efforts at friendliness or not.

In reality it doesn’t matter.  I am doing what I need to do.  So much of life is like that. If we want our culture and our society to go on being a decent place to live then each of us need to step forward and be accountable for her own actions.  We need to stop blaming our failures on the fact that no one else succeeded.  We need to toe the line of the kind of behavior that we know is appropriate.

So just because everyone else throws the trash out the window that doesn’t mean I can.  Just because everybody else parks taking up two spaces at the grocery store doesn’t mean that I can.  Just because everybody else is checking their emails and their Facebook postings in the middle of the sermon doesn’t mean that I can.

Even more important when we stand before God, it will not be what other people did, or how other people responded, but how we trusted in Jesus.

Here’s waving at you.

homo unius libri