This is such a crazy world and the wise among us can often look silly and out of sync because of the way we cut slack for others for no other reason than they’re dealing with it too. Some of us, I swear, would not be recognized for what we really are just going by the situation we’re in! It’s reason enough to be forgiving.

We all realize this under the skin, or we wouldn’t be so happy to accept that brides spend hours in front of the mirror before the event. People clean up their homes before important visitors arrive. Girls used to wear their Easter dresses and hats each spring and it was a glorious event.

People understand dressup.

For some reason they don’t extend that to the dolt who misbehaves on the road, or the brat at checkout who disrupts everyone, or the stone faced receptionist. We understand dress up but have little capacity to accept ‘substandard’, but it can’t just go one way. People will dip below their best selves from time to time.

I’m as guilty as anyone, I suppose. My descriptors of other motorists and their rotten motivations are too colorful : )

So, why is there ‘dress up’?

Because we love things at their best and we know that ‘at their best’ may require special care.

Some people keep themselves and their lives up nicely. When they push it just a bit further, they present very impressively. Others, it’s a trick for them to watch their mouths for the duration of a visit. With the same supreme effort, they may only approach a few levels below the presentability of others who seem more civilized.

Some impress all on their own with no special care to do it. I think of people I know. I think of the Kurosawa movie, “Dersu Uzala” whose main character was a mountain man with no guile but a wonderful temperament.

Such people do not conform. It isn’t that they’re rebellious or classless, but it’s how they’re put together. By and by, experience shows their light to people who find them quite acceptable.

There are plenty who in the end prove substandard by any measure. For now, we often don’t know them from the innocently ignorant or the seriously challenged.

This is why cutting people slack in their moronic behavior is often adviseable. We just don’t know the story.

True, sometimes a slapdown is in order. There are individuals who depend on predation and bullying and they will move to an easier target rather than deal with blowback. Some even reconsider their behavior.

It isn’t easy to differentiate those with a bad day from those who make days bad.

We don’t always move from warmth to warmth on this planet. We leave our toasty warm bed to enter the cold day because we have to, but along the way we replace that warmth with other sources. There is only so much one can do in bed. Real living is out there in the cold where we do battle with the elements, the idiots, and the rest. It’s energizing!

And when we get back, the bed is cold. The cycle starts anew.