inches away from murder

I stood at the MRT station this morning waiting for the train to arrive so I could get to a meeting. I, like everyone else at the station, had somewhere to get to. I feel that it is one of the primary failures and causes for bad behavior that people forget that everyone else there wants to get where they are going in the shortest amount of time as possible.

And so this lack of concern for other passengers and a focus on the self allows for treating all of the other passengers like crap. What's worse is that there is a total disregard for propriety, manners, or even being decent. The title of this entry is taken from the idea that earlier today, as the train slid into the station, I was pushed forward, almost straight into the train's path as it whizzed by. While death may not have been a sure thing if i had made contact with the MRT, something very bad would have happened to me. For what? because some asshole couldn't wait and had to push me in the way of the train so he could get closer?

There has to be some way to make a train ride, specifically the MRT ride, civil. Evidently all those signs aren't working at all. I saw a guy almost tackle a woman because she was trying to get out of the MRT and he wanted to get in. He just bowled over her. In no way can that be right. And we can assume that this person knows that it's wrong. So why did he still do it?

We know it's wrong to cut in line. And it saves us what, 20, 30 seconds when it comes to slipping your card in and getting out of the station. And still people do it.

I refuse to believe in some stupid idea that the Filipino lacks discipline. That's just us being racist against ourselves. It's a matter of us recognizing not the special qualities in ourselves, or as the school where I used to work loved to say ordinary giftedness. If we want this kind of behavior to end there has to be an acknowledgement of our belonging to this huge thing called the human race, and the small things we do as the things that define us, not to some god who will pass judgement, but rather for posterity, for when some civilization in the future finds us and says, man, is this what humans were all about?