There was a time, not that long ago, when holding a door for someone wasn’t a moral dilemma. You didn’t have to wonder if they deserved it or check their beliefs, their posts, their opinions on things that have absolutely nothing to do with a door.
You just … held it.
Somewhere along the way, that kind of simple, baseline respect seems to have quietly slipped out the back door. No goodbye. Just gone … poof, like the last guest at a party who didn’t even bother to say thank you.
And I keep asking myself the same question: Where did respect and compassion go?
Or better yet, just plain humanity?
Maybe it’s just my personal theory, but I really do think something shifted during the Covid years. Think about it. We were all pushed into isolation. Stripped of our routines. Cut off from the small, daily interactions that remind us we’re part of something bigger than ourselves. Less eye contact or in person conversations. No shared spaces where humanity quietly reinforces itself.
Just … us. Alone. With our thoughts. And worse: our screens.
At first, there was something almost beautiful about it.
Remember?
People checking in on each other. Neighbors dropping off groceries. Social media filled with, “Are you okay?” and “We’ll get through this together.”
It felt softer. Like the world, for a moment, had remembered how to care.
But then … something changed. Not all at once, but slowly like a leak you don’t notice until everything feels empty and your basement floods. The empathy started to thin out. The patience wore down.
And in its place? Frustration and rage.
Then something even darker crept in. We started fighting against each other. Bullying people who don’t share our politics or world views.
We are living in a truly messed-up world.
Humans are at the top of the food chain, yet we’re acting like primal animals hunting.
Not for survival … but for the next takedown. The next comment. The next opportunity to prove someone wrong, expose them, cancel them. We sharpen our opinions like weapons and then act surprised when everything around us starts to bleed.
And the justifications? They’re endless.
Racism…explained away. Antisemitism…minimized or denied, but actually skyrocketing. Cruelty…repackaged to suit our own needs.
It’s like we’ve created a world where behavior isn’t judged by what it is … but by who is doing it.
And that is a dangerous place to live.
Because once you start justifying hate, you don’t get to control where it stops. It doesn’t stay contained. It spreads like a disease. And we help it spread. Every time we engage with it. Every time we share it. Every time we scroll, pause, and feed the very thing we claim to be disgusted by. We have influencers as our role models- people whose job is to capture attention, not necessarily elevate it. And yet we sit there, thumbing through outrage like it’s a daily requirement.
Click. React. Repeat.
It’s like emotional fast food … quick, addictive, and leaving us feeling worse the more we consume. And somewhere in all of this, we’ve lost something fundamental:
Respect that isn’t conditional. Compassion that isn’t selective. The ability to see a human being before we see their stance.
So I keep wondering-
Is hatred contagious? It’s starting to feel like it. But if it does indeed spread, then maybe- just maybe-it can also be stopped the same way.
Not with one giant gesture. But with small daily interruptions.
Just … stopping.
Not every thought needs to be posted. Not every opinion needs a platform.
Not every moment of outrage needs amplification. And I know -this is the part where everyone says, “But it matters!”
Of course it does.
But let’s be honest about something else: Nobody is really changing their core beliefs because of a stranger’s post. We’re not persuading. We’re just getting louder. It’s like yelling across a canyon and expecting the echo to come back as understanding.
So what if we tried something different?
Less broadcasting.
More listening.
Less proving.
More pausing.
Change…real change-isn’t a speedboat. It’s a cruise ship. (Hopefully not the one carrying the hantavirus.) It turns slowly and intentionally with small shifts that eventually alter direction.
Like holding the door again. But literally and figuratively.
Because right now, it feels like we’re all standing on opposite sides of it, slamming it shut on each other … and then wondering why no one feels welcome. We don’t need to agree on everything to treat each other with basic decency. We don’t need to see the world the same way to recognize that we’re all living in it together.
And we definitely don’t need to keep feeding something that is clearly making everything worse.
So maybe the question isn’t just, “What happened to people?” Maybe it’s …“When did we decide this was acceptable?”
At some point, we’re going to have to look at the rage, the division, the casual cruelty we scroll past like it’s normal -and ask ourselves a harder question than, “Who’s right?” We’re going to have to ask: “Who have we become?”
Because this version of us- this reactive, on-edge, always-ready-to-pounce version -wasn’t always who we were. And it doesn’t have to be who we stay.
We don’t fix a broken culture by getting louder inside it. We don’t restore respect by demanding it while refusing to give it. We don’t heal hatred by mastering it.
Instead, we interrupt it intentionally.
It’s about choosing every single day, whether we are contributing to the problem … or becoming part of the repair. And what we permit, what we engage in, what we excuse …
We promote.
So if this is a turning point …Let it turn with us.
Let’s hold that door open.
That’s my Reveal.
Love,
Karin
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