Tried not holding the door for someone and felt like a criminal for the next 3 blocks

So I was leaving a coffee shop in downtown Portland yesterday and there was this guy about 15 feet behind me walking toward the door. Normally I would just wait the 4 seconds and hold it. But I had this thought like what if I just... didn't? Just kept walking like normal. So I did it. And I swear for the next few minutes my brain was screaming at me that I had just committed some kind of crime. I kept glancing back to see if he was mad or something. He was just walking normally on his phone probably didn't even notice. But I felt super weird for like 3 whole blocks. Has anyone else tried breaking a tiny norm like that and had your stomach drop for way longer than makes sense?

2 comments

2 Comments

abby_black16d ago

Start noticing how we've all been trained to feel responsible for everyone's tiny comforts, like we're supposed to be background characters in other people's lives 24/7. It's wild how skipping a 4-second normal thing triggers the same guilt as actually doing something bad, even when nobody else cares. Basically our brains are just running on old scripts that say we have to be polite all the time, even when it makes no real difference.

the_logan16d ago

@abby_black you nailed it with that "4-second normal thing" bit. I caught myself apologizing to a stranger for accidentally standing too close at a crosswalk the other day, like I owed them a life debt or something. My brain's running that old script so hard I'm pretty sure I'm the unpaid actor in everyone else's movie too.