Tales of a coffee-holic: No one else counts

We’re all fans of rules, regulations and principals, until those frameworks for living our lives apply to us personally in ways that we don’t like.

Although we live in a very conservative area, I’ve met many people who are fiscally conservative until it comes to using government money to build something that they want, personally. It’s hard not to be that way. Of course you understand the merits of a program that benefits you or your business better than one that would help out someone else. Obviously you get why a feature in the community like a golf course, a park or a swimming pool would benefit everyone if you personally know that it would benefit you.

You don’t know the ins and outs of another person’s business, so of course you don’t understand the struggles of that business and everything it entails and how some government program or tax break might help it, but you certainly know how a program or tax break would help your own business.

You might not understand how many people could be drawn to the community by features like a golf course or swimming pool if you’re not interested in either of those personally. How could you know the joy that playing a game a golf might bring if you’ve never tried it, or the benefit swimming might have for children if you have none?

Most people are fans of the laws that keep everyone in line, until they or their family members are on the wrong side of it. We want everyone to follow the rules until someone we love commits a crime and then we want leniency.

The difference is, in all of our heads, we think that everything that happens to us is more important than anything that happens to anyone else. We all think we’re the most important. Even people who often perform selfless acts understand their own struggles better than someone else’s. I think we are just hard-wired to be selfish. We want the law to go easy on us and our families when we screw up, but to hand down fair punishments to others who break the law in order to cut down on crime. We want all tax rules to be applied equally and by the books until a law that we don’t like applies to us and then we want an exception. Although this may not be true for everyone all the time, it is true for most of us at least some of the time.

I always found it funny when wealthy people who oppose welfare and food stamps didn’t make their kids work during high school or college, and just supplied them with money. Poor people don’t deserve handouts but my kids sure do. They’re MY kids, they deserve it.

What makes us good people is when we fight our selfish urges. What makes us better people is when we attempt to comprehend that the person driving too slow in front of us, making us late for that appointment, might be crying, might have had a bad day. What makes us good people is when we feel sympathy for the overwhelmed waitress trying to do her best instead of giving her a poor tip. What makes us good people is trying to understand what it’s like to own a business hampered by tax laws as well as that same business owner trying to understand what it’s like to be young and poor with no one to help you.

Even though we all think ourselves and our needs are the most important, they’re not. Every person in the world is just as important as you are. We all have self-interest, we all have needs and desires.

Everyone wants to be happy and to live their lives enjoying their loved ones and the things they desire. No one person in the world is beneath you. I most often think of this when I’m at the airport and someone pushes in front of me at the escalator line with no explanation. In my head I usually say, “Wow, you must think you’re much more important than I am.”

You’re not. No one is. And I am no more important than you.