Society of Discouragement
I’m greatly interested in observing marketing in our society. Understanding how that marketing helps shape us is interesting, but sometimes, wondering how the marketing reflects society is even more so.
Case in point. Last Saturday, I visited the local Vons grocery store to pick up a card with an encouraging theme to it. Mind you, this store has quite a selection of cards, I think it spans one entire side of the aisle. I waded through the mass of birthday and graduation cards to find the “Special Occasions” section. This section takes up I suppose about 1/5 of all the cards. It’s not a tiny section. I looked for a card with the “Encouragement” label sticking out behind it, and found a sweet, understated one right away. It even fit my intentions perfectly. I’m glad, because, it was the only encouragement card I could find. And I’m not talking about labeled spots that were empty. I mean, you could tell, this was it.
Then I noticed a funny thing as I was leaving the aisle. There must have been at least seven cards, maybe more, with the theme of “Happy Birthday from the cat/dog”. So let me get this straight. Out of hundreds of cards, I found one on person-to-person encouragement. That’s at least six less than cards “from” creatures that don’t buy the card, can’t communicate in spoken language with humans, and have no intentions in ever engaging in funny birthday wishes.
That’s messed up.
We’re messed up.
17. May 2005 at 18:14
I agree. People now days can’t give others encouragement. I’m even finding that people now days can’t take encouragement or praise FROM others. I thanked a kid who was volunteering at work today & told her I appreciated what she was doing & that she was doing a great job. She just stared at me blankly not knowing how to respond. How sad!
17. May 2005 at 18:21
I agree about not being able to take compliments either. I think for starters, we are not as used to getting them. And without getting too much into a “The More You Know” style message, I think as more and more people think of themselves as garbage, the harder it is for them to accept kind words.
I used to have such a difficult time with compliments. My first goal when I got one was to insist the other person was wrong in their assessment of me. Now I feel less that way, and even if I do, I try to bite my tongue. I’d say “Thank you” is just enough.
18. May 2005 at 07:41
Great post! When I was in Jr. High my dance instructer got upset when she would give positive feedback to the dancers and they would stare blankly at her or argue with her. She sat us all down and told us it was perfectly acceptable to do something well and recieve compliments graciously…with a simple thank you. She expressed that it was RUDE not to aknowledge a compliment.
18. May 2005 at 20:38
Brendon, if it h elps you feel better….you SUCK at the guitar! >:-p