Heather Christena Schmidt

Sorry, that’s a bit bold, but I really think there are a lot of people that just need to hear that.  SHUT UP.  

In all seriousness, here’s the deal:  there is so much self-centeredness going on in this world that I’m starting to feel like my head is going to explode from the inside-out.  Still not understanding what I’m talking about?  Consider these two scenarios, both of which I encountered today:

While trying to relax with a good book in my usual, comfy chair at the local library this afternoon, I was inundated with so much noise I read the same sentence of Beauvoir’s ‘Ethics of Ambiguity’ over and over again.  Kids were running around screaming, somebody’s baby had bumped his head and was crying, and two, gloriously obnoxious women were standing right next to me having the conversation of the century in volumes much louder than an inside voice.  When I finally got up and moved to another location, that crying baby and his mom came over near me and he continued to cry while she read a story out loud to him.  With every turn of the storybook’s pages she read faster and faster, and grew louder and louder.  When I finally had enough of the noise and disquiet of what is supposed to be the quietest place on Earth, I asked the librarian if she was going to do anything about the noise and was told “these people have just as much of a right to be loud as you do to be quiet.”  (And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I rarely complain in public places.)

I came home shortly afterwards, frazzled and ready for the quiet of my home.  Of no one’s fault but my own, I made the mistake of logging into my Facebook page only to see that yet another friend is expecting a baby – yay, congratulations, join the crowd over every other woman under the age of 40 right now.  All snarkiness aside, I went to do the right thing and offer my congratulations, and in doing so noticed that every other comment of congratulations on her status of joyous news turned into something along the lines of this: “Congrats! I’m 31 weeks and I’m ready for this baby to pop!”  I’m sorry!  I didn’t realize that this Facebook update was all about you!  31 weeks and ready to pop?  Well, let me just set my own joy aside to focus on you for a few minutes.

Okay, so it’s a bit of a tangent, but ultimately, it seems that so much narcissism is creeping into every, single corner of our lives.  We take every opportunity to turn everything into being about ourselves; and completely disregard the feelings of others.  To the ladies at the library who couldn’t take their conversation outside; the mother that didn’t realize she should remove her screaming child from the grounds; the parents who don’t control their children from running and yelling; these people who like to turn every person’s happy news into being all about them; and every other self-centered person who seems to think that everything in the world is related to them and their self-interest in some way, shape, or form:  SHUT UP.