Theobroma - Food of the Gods

Tidbits of life from a simple Syrian-Californian girl.

23 December 2013

Situational Awareness

The flight attendants on Southwest are hysterical.  Today on my flight the flight attendant got on the intercom as we were boarding and said "now people let's have some situational awareness, if you see yourself standing there in the aisle with nobody in front of you and a lot of people behind you, yes, it's  your fault and please move.  Step out of the aisle."

Wouldn't life run a little more smoothly if people had situational awareness.  According to wikipedia, situational awareness "is the perception of environmental elements with respect to time and/or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status after some variable has changed, such as time, or some other variable, such as a predetermined event."  In other words, being aware of our surroundings but I'm going to take it a step further and say also being considerate of your social surroundings and acting accordingly (accordingly, this may be ambiguous).  This may be called common sense to some, manners to others, and to another (unfortunately) large group of people, it is a foreign concept.  Whether we want to admit it or not, we live in a society with other people where our actions affect others and we are (scary thought) affected by the actions of others.  This extends to much more than just moving out of the way for people on the airplane (or not driving slowly in the left/fast/passing lane, talking loudly on your cell phone when others are trying to read/study, sneezing without covering your mouth, etc.).  I really don't have much to say other than let's try to remember the other people that we live with (in society); it's nice to be polite.  I struggle with expressing this eloquently - it is considerate to have manners, to be nice to other people, to not be selfish.  Isn't it good to aspire to be considerate?  It's fun to make other people smile and feel good about themselves.  :)

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