Waiting to help

Sometimes there’s an awkwardness that happens when someone’s following us through a door, but they’re not particularly close.

How long do we pause in order to open the door for the next person? A few seconds? Fifteen? Thirty seconds?

It’s kind of odd when I think about it. That our “standard” courtesy only has a shelf life of five seconds or so. That pausing thirty seconds to be kind seems like an unusual effort.

And yet, what if we adopted a new attitude? What if thirty seconds (or more!) was not an inconvenience at all? That we would gladly pause to be kind, civil, and courteous, just because that’s what we do? What if we all began to approach the world in this way?