An Urgent Plea For More Common Sense In The World

Image source: My private collection. An amazing sunset in Estonia, Lääne-Virumaa, Obja village.

The title of this piece is meant to be this dramatic so You would click on it and read what I have to say. Because I believe it is important.

In order for us to bring more of something we first have to understand what this actually is.

Common sense is clear thought, a broader perspective. Developed by understanding that there is more than ourselves in the world, by reading and learning about what surrounds us, what we really are. 

Lets expand on this with a real life example.

So lets imagine that You are in pretty heavy traffic and driving Your car somewhere, for example to work or a meeting. The traffic is heavy and all the lines are pretty evenly full. Now You have options.

First, You can start dangerously maneuvering, trying to get ahead as fast as possible. While doing that You put the lives of others as well as Yourself in danger. On a less dramatic scale, You frustrate Yourself and Your fellow drivers with the stunts You pull trying to shave of a couple of minutes of Your ETA. It is actually proven, tested that in city traffic (depending on the city of course, talking about Tallinn) that the time You can “win” is about 5 minutes. Hope that puts things into perspective. Even if it is 10, in the grand scheme of things it is basically nothing. That’s option number one.

Option number two. You can observe the traffic, move with the same pace as most of the people. Maybe driving past people who are unreasonably slow and letting those drivers pass who I described in the last paragraph. Getting to Your destination calmly, on time and hopefully with even a smile upon Your face (because everyone else on the road was pleasant, let You cut in when You needed and You did the same for them). And maybe, just maybe losing 5 minutes of Your precious time.

Obviously there are more options here but these are good to illustrate my point.

We must understand one thing about both those scenarios described above. At the core of them lie two things.

The first scenario — fear. Fear of losing out, of not being enough and lacking the understanding that there are other things besides us in the world. I must add here that it is social conditioning as well. People take on certain types of behavior. Driving like an insane person is unfortunately one of them. I’ve noticed myself taking on that energy. It happens but we can learn and do better next time.

The second scenario — trust. Trust in life, in ourselves, in other people, the universe at large. That we are taken care of and in the grand scheme of things 5 minutes does not justify unjustly putting other people’s lives in danger. Only in very extreme cases this is justified. Ambulances, birth, life or death situations etc. And even in those situations a person must exercise extreme care and vigilance.

PS! Developing common sense takes time. Take Your time in developing it. The quality of the time we spend on this planet depends on it.

Ian Altosaar

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