Читать книгу A Smart Girl's Guide: Manners (Revised) - Nancy Holyoke - Страница 9

me first?

There’s a voice inside each of us that says

“Me first.”

It tells us to please ourselves—to take

what we want and do what we like,

never mind about anybody else. If “me

first” had its way, we’d spend our days

trampling on one another’s rights and

feelings, and pretty soon the world

would be a snarling mess.

This is where manners come in.

Manners aren’t a bunch of rules

dreamed up by fusspots who want

to cramp your style. Manners help

people get along together. They

make us nicer. They teach us to put

ourselves in the other person’s shoes.

A girl who chooses to use good manners is telling the world she

believes that other people matter as much as she does. She’s saying

that life isn’t about what one person does for herself but about

what people can do together for the common good.

So who decides what’s polite and what’s not? We all do.

When we talk about manners, we’re talking about how most people

in a certain time and place think people should behave. What’s

polite in one country isn’t always polite in another. What was rude

fifty years ago isn’t always rude today. Manners depend a lot on

custom—and different customs often live side by side.

In a way, manners are not so much

a set of rules as they are a language

you use to tell other people what

they can expect from you. The

better you know the language, the

more you can say.

Are you trustworthy?

Do you think only of yourself?

Would you make a good friend or

a poor one?