Tempered Glass - April 29 2023

 

Tempered Glass

April 29 2023

The pushy driver

giving me the finger.

The supermarket clerk

with the sarcastic one-liner.

The man on the sidewalk

who brusquely shouldered by.

People are angry.

Always were,

but it seems different now.

My fuse is also short.

Because life is more frustrating than before?

Because emotions are contagious,

self-righteous rage

so delectable?

Or because the internet

   —  where we can be nameless

and unaccountable  —

has given licence to our worst selves?

Of course, it was even shorter

when I was a kid;

if not temper tantruming

then bristling inside.

Like nitroglycerine,

simply jostle me

and I'd explode.

But now, older and wiser

I control myself.

Even though life is hard,

it seems the world

is falling apart,

and there's a general sense

of unfairness

and disillusionment.

So the safeties are off

and we're all on hair-trigger.

I smiled back at the guy,

apologized

with a guilty shrug.

But he still flipped the bird and leaned on his horn,

flooring it

to make up for lost time.

I caught a brief glimpse

of the set of his eyes

thin line of his lips;

a car length

and 2 panes of tempered glass

all there was between us.

A distance

that makes it easy to act out.

And a distance

that saves us from ourselves.

From bad words.

Slap fights and punch-ups.

Fully loaded guns.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/charles-duhigg-american-anger/576424/