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The case for being kind

Earlier this month, Pique ran a letter from a frustrated "part-time" Whistler resident who had a negative experience in the Marketplace IGA parking lot.
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Photo courtesy of Headwater Projects

Earlier this month, Pique ran a letter from a frustrated "part-time" Whistler resident who had a negative experience in the Marketplace IGA parking lot.

It got me thinking a lot about how people treat each other in this town—and the importance of being nice.

"I tried to use my app to park ... at Marketplace," she wrote. "I even looked over at the parking control car and said: 'there is the [f#$@*&] who is going to try to ticket us.'"

Evidently, the woman and her friends couldn't pay via the parking app, because their "international data would not work."

"We ran over to [a coffee shop] to use Wi-Fi and parked the car through the app at 12:29 p.m. The car was ticketed at 12:27 p.m."

Whistler, the woman pleads, better watch out, as it's dangerously close to alienating its lifeblood—the millions of tourists who flock here every year.

"I am embarrassed for Whistler to my friends and my guests," she laments. "This just is not the Whistler I know and love."

What stuck out to me after reading this dispatch (apart from how it's a master class in sounding entitled) was how much it differed from a recent experience I'd had in that very same lot.

A week or so prior, I'd blanked on registering my vehicle at one of the—clearly visible—machines that line the square, and exited the drug store to find a parking attendant in the process of administering a ticket to my car.

It was raining, and the man looked like he'd just finished one of the last legs of the West Coast Trail—exhausted, cold, and wet.

I pleaded with him not give me a ticket, telling him I was about to pay.

The man looked at me, then looked down, at my bags.

I think I smiled, realizing just how ridiculous I must have looked: standing there with all of the evidence he needed to call my BS.

Then the parking attendant did something unexpected. He put away his machine and walked away, telling me something along the lines of, "I'm not going to ticket you, because you weren't a jerk."

I've thought about this small interaction since. Are people constantly being rude to this guy? What would possess someone to take out their frustration on someone who is merely doing their job?

From my vantage point, Whistler is by and large a friendly place. That said, if you pay attention, you could certainly find examples of less-than-friendly (and downright rude) behaviour.

Recently, I saw a visiting national athlete (complete with one of those matching track-suits emblazoned with his country's name and flag) badger a cashier to the point where another customer intervened.

And I routinely hear of instances where servers have positive interactions with customers, but don't receive any tip.

It's easy enough to chalk this up to a few bad apples, to go on believing that this action-sports oasis doesn't have any issues with civility (or for that matter clean drinking water).

But really, who are we kidding?

Like any community, there are rude people.

Writing in the American context, New York Times columnist David Brooks has argued that the Donald Trump presidency was fomented by a "spiritual and moral crisis" related to soaring rates of isolation, depression and feelings of economic dislocation.

In a recent TED Talk, Brooks speaks candidly about his own internal crisis, about how, despite his astonishing personal success, he was lonely and isolated. His marriage had failed. He had few real friends. He had scaled the heights of the meritocracy, but had questions about his greater purpose.

We are in a "national valley" because we do not have a community-minded mindset to balance our personal one, he argues.

"We no longer feel good about ourselves as a people, we've lost our defining faith in our future, we don't see each other deeply, we don't treat each other as well. And we need a lot of changes. We need an economic change and environmental change. But we also need a cultural and relational revolution. We need to name the language of a recovered society."

That recovery, I would argue, begins with the dozens of small interactions we have with each other each and every day.

By choosing grace over anger and kindness over meanness, we can change the world for the better—one positive interaction at a time.