Remember to mind your manners!!!!

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.  If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter which fork you use. 

Emily Post

The test of good manners is to be patient with bad ones. 

~Gabirol (Solomon ben Yehuda ibn Gabirol), The Choice of Pearls

Manners, Etiquette and Courtesies evolve as society changes, though the root of courtesy is kindness and consideration for others. I think it is the 'little things' that matter the most. Little gestures make a world of difference. Kindness and courtesy needn't always be deliberate and planned. Spontaneous kindness is an attribute of a person who already is well-mannered and courteous and whose natural instinct for courtesy is demonstrated in everything he or she does. Kind and well mannered person acts the same way when nobody is looking. When we get so busy and absorbed in what we have to do, it is nice to have a reminder that acts of kindness make our world a pleasanter place to live.

I was raised with a certain standard that I considered ‘the norm.’ Manners and class went hand-in-hand. One did not exist without the other. However, in today’s society, expecting ‘the norm’ is like looking for water in the desert. I find myself appalled at the absence of both.

I am by no means a Proper Patty, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but being ‘old-fashioned’ speaks to one’s character. It is common courtesy to hold the door for someone, give up your subway seat for someone older, pregnant, handicap and yes, gentleman, for a lady.

When invited as a guest to someone’s home, you brought a gift. When you sneezed, someone blessed you. Saying please and thank you was expected.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve held the door for someone without receiving a thank you…how many sneezes have gone unblessed.

In the modern world, where sit-down-family-dinners are a thing of the past and children are being raised with a sense of entitlement, there is an absence of discipline and an abundance of self-centered behavior. When every child receives a trophy just for showing-up, consequences for a lack of hard work no longer exist. Instead, constant praise and rewards are given, perhaps overcompensating for our parent’s generation of ‘tough love,’ creating a society with overly high self-esteem. Throw in social media sites and their huge influence on our culture and extreme narcissism has followed.

Inevitably, self-centered behavior breeds bad manners and tests our morality. So how do we integrate manners and class into a modern day society of ‘MEs’?

Respect for us and for others would guide our morals and our manners respectively. The connection between #manners and morality is becoming more apparent. How we present ourselves in public define us. First impressions are everything. Whether that public image is true or not, we have created it.

A cross around one’s neck and attending church on Sundays does not make one Christian. Simply saying please and thank you certainly does not make one moral. But there is definitely a correlation between the well-mannered and the classy.

When our private lives become public through social media, we open ourselves up to judgment based on what we share with the world. Have not we all ever wondered why no one posts on social media about church? Instead, we post what we did after church when the real fun really begins, with a drink in one hand, a dress barely covering ‘the goods,’ dancing atop a table. Because in the attention-starved culture we live in, the latter scenario garners more ‘likes.’ And, apparently God is not on social media.

Ladies, I’m not saying we should wear turtleneck or ankle-length skirt to the bar, but what happened to leaving something to the imagination? If we are wearing the completely sheer top with nothing but a very visible bra underneath, why wear the top at all? When we risk giving up ‘the goods’ by merely walking, maybe we could use an extra inch on that dress? And when our cleavage suggests that we should guide tours of The Grand Canyon, an extra button would go a long way. We may have just come from church. And we may not be the town tramp. But that is the image we portray.

When do the #Kardashians become our icons, instead of #Audrey Hepburn and #Grace Kelly? That doesn’t bode well for our generation. Let us try to stay classy!’

We seem to feed into this generation’s sense of #entitlement creating the #egocentric #narcissist. We all have been on a date where the other person talks about themselves incessantly? Or the ‘friend’ we bump into on the street and in the few blocks we walk together, never asks about us? Or the consistently late person who thinks our time is less valuable? We should say to those people, ‘It is not always about you!’ Take an interest in others. Ask questions. Inquire about someone else’s life other than your own. A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot…

We may be beautiful, have the best this or the best … But there is nothing more tasteless than the selfish, egotistic, showy person.  Enough already! We may think we are fabulous, but we are certainly not humble. No one need to see all of us…By all means, take it all off and get freaky… wherever your escapades take you. Just keep it private! A little modesty will go a long way.

Money certainly doesn’t buy us class. There is nothing tackier than #flaunting one’s wealth. It used to be #uncouth to discuss the money we earned or labels we owned. Now we have the red carpet culture where the first question celebrities are asked is, ‘Who are you wearing?’ Truthfully, I find the question to be tasteless. It seems this preoccupation with possessions is preventing us from living nobly. Is this how we are defining ourselves?

The question used to be a indiscretion. Our status was recognized by how we were composed and the manners we bring forth. We didn’t portray our wealth by the amount of monograms we wore. The label was on the inside. Now, we are walking advertisements for the brands we wear. The exclusivity and allure is gone.

At one time, we were predisposed to proper manners and #etiquette. Currently, the lines between manners and class are unclear.

When “Keeping up with the Kardashians” has become the standard, needing and flaunting ‘stuff’ in excess has become the norm. Instead of hard work and praising others for their achievements, our culture has become a materialistic competition. Through social media, we are privy to luxury vacations, yachts, champagne, Ferraris, and frequent postings of Chanel bags and Bvlgari jewelry. The mentality that ‘if they can have it, I can too’ has warped our appreciation for luxury items. We have become a shallow culture of excess, greed…and credit card debt.

If we are barely paying our rent, maybe buying Chanel bag was not the smartest purchase?  Or, maybe we should just keep our purchases offline. Life isn’t show-and-tell. Be humble. What we own shouldn’t define us or anyone else. Our only competition should be ourselves. The nice things we own and the travels we take should be a personal reminder of the hard work it took to attain.

One can certainly be polite without being virtuous, or have etiquette without morality. As children, we are taught manners with the intention of becoming moral or virtuous. The hope is that we internalize and rationalize etiquette to transform basic rule-following into genuine morality. We must practice being good before we become good.

A civilization without basic rules is no longer civilized. These etiquette ‘rules’ or protocol, although vary from culture to culture, the underlying principles are the same. They give us concrete tools to communicate our moral attitudes effectively.

 Remember to mind your manners!!!!