LOVE, Kloudiia

I was waiting at a traffic light junction the other way. Wait, wait, wait.

Then all of a sudden, I almost choked on a cloud of smoke. Yeah, you guessed what happened. A smoker was standing right in front of me – smoking. The smoke that he exhaled was brought upon flat on my face by the wind.

That wasn’t the first time, and I know it won’t be the last too. Many a time I had to encounter such smoke attacks when smokers walking in front of me can’t resist their need to have a cigarette, even when they are walking.

What can I do? Nothing!

Well, not really nothing. It’s either I hold my breath, block my nose using my fingers, or I have to find a way to overtake him so that I won’t get the free second-hand smoke from him every other second.

Laws govern a country. Rules and regulation run an organisation. Unspoken rules, which we call the culture, determine boundaries in a society.

Without rules set, there won’t be law and order in a society. Therefore, I appreciate having rules, and laws. They are there for a reason. Whether or not people understand or accept them, they are effective deterrents to acts and behaviours that can  potentially cause certain unwanted effects that are not beneficial to the society on the whole.

But rules are rules, isn’t it? If we choose not to abide, then the rules can’t serve their purpose.

So we have laws, and the government.

But there are still people who defy the government, or break the rules set by the company. Why do they do so?

Some find that the rules are too imposing, too strict, and don’t make sense in their situations. 

Some break the rules because they have nothing better to do. They want to make a statement.

How far can this bring them in life I don’t know.

What I know is, as a socially responsible person, you do things that not only benefit yourself, you also take care not to hurt others, the environment, the society and country.

If you want to break the rules, you do it not because you want to make a statement but due to situations. But you don’t incite the others to follow your footsteps.

If you want to smoke, by all means. But if your smoke is causing others to have some breathing difficulties, why not be socially responsible to that person (though he/she is not technically a friend per se) and save him/her less headache?

I have nothing against smokers. I have friends who smoke too. 

If you love listening to music while you are on the road, by all means plug your iPod into your ears and blast the music away! If you want to share it with all the passengers in the MRT by playing the music from your mobile phone’s speaker, then maybe you like to consider if they share the same taste in music as you do. Spare your neighbour the pain of having to bear with the noise while he/she is doing her best to catch a short nap or to read a good book.

If it is compulsory for you to put your mobile phone on ringer mode in a seminar or during a movie, then it probably means the seminar or movie isn’t really worth listening to or watching as the event clearly pales in comparison to the importance of whatever business you need to attend to.

Even when I can’t help but to overhear it’s regarding your social appointment later. Or have I heard wrongly? High chance of me doing that, since I’m not that good at officially eavesdropping when I was concentrating on what the speaker was talking while having your voice right behind my head. Did I mention the phone rang more than once?  

I’m sorry if this post may have ruffled some feathers. But I feel that as a socially responsible person, I need to bring such details in our daily lives under the microscope so that they aren’t that menial after all. If they are big enough to result in such unwanted effects, then they aren’t trivial as far as the society is concerned.

Socially responsible means to do our own bit to make the society a better place to stay in. We bear in mind the comfort of the public members before we do something for our pleasure and personal gains.

Be socially responsible my friends. Make this world a better place. I’m not the best, but I certainly am doing my best to keep this in mind everywhere I go. When all else fails, I still have my sister to catch me. Oops!

[tags]Social responsibility, public, better, world, society, country, environment[/tags]