Just Like Me

So Kylee and I were talking the other day about how we should live. I told her I live by the, "if everyone was just like me what kind of a world would it be?" mentality. I will elaborate.

This mentality governs a lot of my actions. For instance, when I think about throwing trash out the window the immediate thought that most people have is "well, it is just one piece." But my mentality is, "if everyone threw out a piece of trash, just one, the world would be horribly polluted." So I don't throw out trash out the window because of the implications if everyone did it.

This is another example. There is a road in northern Provo, right before the canyon, in which there is a hill with a road on it which merges onto the big road. I am usually traveling on the big road and people coming down this hill merge into my road. I hate when they are going slow and the make it so the big road has to merge when their road says merge. They are requiring two people to yield instead of one, slowing down the whole process. So for a while I wouldn't yield for them no matter how much they pushed it. I thought, "I need to show them that they are supposed to yield." I think that mentality is ridiculous now, for a couple of reasons. The first is that I shouldn't think it is my job in life to correct all wrongs, or at least what I conceive of as wrongs. Second, if everyone did what I was doing it would be a horrible world where nobody would be letting others into lanes. The roads would become horribly aggressive wrecks. Also, think about when they close a lane on the highway. I used to be the kind of person that flies up the lane that is ending and sneak in right at the front. I realized that if everyone did this it would be a pretty crazy place to drive, and the people that wait patiently in the back of the line get shafted. So I stopped driving up the side. It is also dangerous to be going such a drastically different speed as other people on a road.

So I try to live in a way that if I extended my actions to everyone the world would be better, not worse. I think this is a good mentality. In fact, I walked to church today because of this mindset (and the nice weather), I thought, if everyone in Utah, where they all live a half a mile from the church, walked to church, there would be far less pollution.

So I recommend trying the, "if everyone did this what kind of a world would it be" mentality. It has worked so far for me.