The Crime Of Robbing Another’s Peace

It’s one thing to steal someone’s wallet, cell phone, or latte off the barista counter (does anyone actually do that?), but often times an even worse transgression is to rob another person’s peace of mind.

It feels like we are already stretched so thin as it is: working harder and harder, with many of us having multiple jobs, for an ever-shrinking piece of the pie while getting blasted from all directions with algorithms, excessive stimuli, and corporate manipulation. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to raise a child on top of that, my dog and turtle are plenty.

Having anyone, whether they’re known or a stranger, attack whatever little calmness you have left feels like a far more serious crime than it does on paper. These offenses can come in all sorts of ways, so I’ll list a few examples off the top of my head:

⁃ Stalking or harassing

⁃ Cyberbullying

⁃ A boss asking you to do something outside of normal work hours

⁃ A friend or loved one asking for an unreasonable favor

⁃ Guilt tripping

⁃ Insulting or critiquing someone unprovoked

⁃ Driving like a fucking asshole

Petty as some of these may seem, any disruption into another person’s otherwise unscathed headspace is a form of attack and should not be accepted in a civilized society.

If you’re someone out there who thinks that if you just send one more unanswered text or leave one more unwanted “gift” at his or her door they’ll change their mind about you, stop and seriously reevaluate your life from the ground up. If you like to berate people online behind a faceless, nameless username like a coward, or say passive aggressive things and poke at people right to their face, just be better for Christ’s sake. Grow up.

The moral of the story is that corporations and those in power already want to herd us like sheep and replace us with robots and algorithms, don’t make it easy on them by tearing down each other.