ontheedgeofeverything

As I mentioned in a post a few days back, I bonked my nose rather forcefully over the weekend. I wasn’t sure if I broke it, and after waiting for a few days without tremendous improvement, I decided to go get it checked out.

My nose and it’s shenanigan’s is not what this post is about, however. Sitting in the emergency room waiting room at the hospital for a few hours allowed for an opportunity to do some reflective thinking, and I realized something.

Granted, a hospital emergency room is not necessarily the best environment to observe people in the sense they’re likely not feeling or looking their best, but I really was taken aback by how little self-awareness was happening among the crowd in there.

Self-awareness, in my own words, is being mindful of how we behave, present ourselves, speak, act, etc. and doing so in a manner that reflects our own values and beliefs. Say, for example, you’re someone who is a hardcore believer in waffles being better than pancakes. If you’re a waffle advocate, you wouldn’t, therefore, participate in a pro-pancake rally if you were self-aware.

I realize this is a somewhat ridiculous example, bust most of us like breakfast food, so I figured it was a fair shot.

To a reasonable extent, a hospital is a location where our own self-awareness should be applied when necessary – I consider kindness a positive attribute to anyone’s self-awareness.

Quite a few of the people waiting in the emergency department were loud, inconsiderate, and rude to patients and staff, and some of the conversations occurring were not appropriate for the environment considering there were small children present. I couldn’t help but think to myself how many people were entirely unaware of themselves in that waiting room, and I would imagine some other attentive folks were thinking the same thing.

Self-awareness is always a good thing, and even more so in a hospital.

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