Let It Be

By TAD BARTIMUS

When the celebrating fishermen stopped in front of my house for the third consecutive midnight to see how loud they could play the bass on their car's stereo system, I lost it.

"GO AWAY!" I shouted from the balcony. "GO HOME! GO TO BED! Go ANYWHERE but here."

Increasingly there are more people in my space and in my face who get their manners from watching wrestlers on TV.

My diatribe elicited hoots and hollers from the noise polluters, whose only reaction was to crank up the volume another notch. Eventually, the revelers either ran out of beer or gas and drove off, but by then I was so furious I couldn't go back to sleep so I turned on CNN and watched in disbelief as a Serbian official protested Slobodon Milosevic's innocence at causing the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

Which set me to thinking about a fine old-fashioned word which has fallen out of favor lately, not only in Yugoslavia (and Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia etc., etc.,) but also in the good 'ole U. S. of A.

"RESTRAIN," as defined by Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, means "to hold back from action; keep in check or under control; repress." A main example given is "'to restrain one's temper."

Taken to its extreme, Milosevic and his thugs epitomize the "Who, Me?" attitude of those who have no restraint, who give free rein to their basest instincts and appetites regardless of their effect on others. To a lesser degree, Bill Clinton ignored restraint ("constraint or reserve in feelings, behavior") when he became involved with Monica Lewinsky. Spraying graffiti on a wall, slapping your wife, even throwing a tantrum in middle school when you're old enough to know better, is exhibiting a lack of restraint.

This "Me First" attitude is a trait in all of us; taken to extremes, it creates terrorists on the playground as well as on the world stage. Our first line of defense is to practice restraint on ourselves. I'm certainly not proud that I've given the Freeway Salute to other drivers, yelled at service people who, in my judgment, weren't giving me any, and lost my temper far too many times. Usually I'm chagrined afterwards. Guilt kicks in and that little voice in the back of my head that says "stop it, you're behaving like an idiot" helps me remember my manners.

But increasingly there are more people in my space and in my face who get their manners from watching wrestlers on TV. Not only do they not have any civility or consideration toward others, they don't want any. It cramps their style. Restraint would just get in the way of putting their desires first.

We all suffer these folks: their casual profanity pollutes our air; their menacing drives us from public transport; their promiscuity keeps us out of parks; their megalomaniac sense of entitlement shoves us aside at the grocery store, in the airplane boarding line, while competing for a parking space.

At minimum, these self-aggrandizing bores fray the edges of our daily life; taken to the max, they shoot at us if we challenge them at the movies or pass too close on the interstate. Some, like Milosevic, become gangsters and, unchecked, terrorize thousands. But no one group or country has a monopoly on narcissists.

The bombing of Belgrade, like my shouting from the balcony, may have little or no long term effect on perpetrators whose aggression triggered a violent response. I cannot say definitively why NATO launched its retaliation on behalf of the Albanian Kosovarians, nor do I know if it will prove to be the right thing to do for the long haul. I do know that falling bombs tend to kill people just as dead as soldiers' rifles.

As for my outburst from the balcony, I now recognize that I didn't have any right, either, to disturb the silence of the night by yelling at the fishermen just because I was pushed too far. Provocation is not an excuse to respond in kind. The next time somebody wakes me up with their car radio blaring I'm going to practice restraint and play Beatles music back at them especially "Let It Be."

© Copyright 1998-2000 The Women Syndicate. The content on these pages is the property of The Women Syndicate and may not be used without express permission. Contact friends@tadbartimus.com