1/12/2026
I made the above breakfast on the 12th, but am just writing a post about it today, on the 19th. I am finding that my initial intention to write on the day that I make the breakfast is not always possible, so I am adjusting my own rules for this as I go along. By the way, I think that approach is useful for most of our plans in life, don't you? Why would we continue down a path that has proven unnecessarily unwieldly?
I had some leftover sausage gravy in the fridge, so I paired it with a fried egg an a toasted English muffin. I found out that this combo is sometimes referred to as a "Country Benedict". Okay. Whatever it is called, Keshav loved it. He told me that he prefers bagels to English muffins, but since I still had muffins in the pack, I have to find a way to use them up. What better way than to hide them under sausage gravy?
*
Keshav just returned from a quick weekend trip to New York to hang with a friend of his. Last night, before he returned, I decided to go the the Eagle here in Los Angeles to have "one beer". That is all I had, by the way, since I am technically still in Dry January, with the exception that we can have alcohol when we "go out".
To be honest, the beer was tasty, but unnecessary. I find that alcohol no longer makes me feel the way it used to. I stayed at the bar for all of 40 minutes and then jumped on the bus to come home. It was on the bus that I encountered a particularly nasty person.
I was sitting in the front of the bus, and there were many empty seats both in front and behind me. A guy got on and sat two seats away from me. I took little notice as I was listening to a podcast, as usual.
A few minutes later, he said to me, "Are you going to keep just coughing in my face like that?" I was taken aback, because I had not been coughing, and I did not have a cold or the flu. If anything, I cleared my throat a couple of times. He said that I should be covering my mouth when I cough, and gave me a look that I recognize from my work as a couple therapist--it is what I sometimes see between partners in the room: contempt.
Have you ever had someone look at you in a way that communicates they have a story about you that you have little control over? This was the look he gave me, and I was not sure why. I was just sitting there listening to my podcast trying to get home after a consuming a beer I found unnecessary. He turned away from me and I watched him shake his head back and forth in the way that people do when they want to communicate disgust.
This pissed me off. So I pushed back. I said to him, "You are SO superior right now, aren't you. Bitch, don't start with me." He continued to talk about coughing and covering the mouth but I just told him that I was not listening to him anymore and he then said, "Oh, so you are not going to have any accountability for what you did?"
In a way, he had a point. I was not being accountable for covering my mouth, whether I was coughing or just clearing my throat. At the time I genuinely was not aware of my bad behavior. It made me think about the previous bus trip earlier in the day where I found myself sitting in front of a woman who was loudly playing videos on her phone without using headphones. You can imagine the shitty stories about her that were going on in my head--how dare her!!! In truth, she was breaking the rules of the public transit system, and should know better. But I did not confront her because I doubted she would take accountability for her actions, and I would just end up looking like an asshole.
Here is the thing about accountability--it goes both ways in a civil society. But Los Angeles is not a civil society anymore, so the guy who accosted me wanted to call me out for not being accountable while not taking any accountability for his own wellbeing. Look, we were on a bus. If you are concerned about people coughing on the bus, which is GOING to happen, wear a mask. Or move seats!
If you do need to say something to someone, there is a way to do it that shows respect and camaraderie. That is action that can be taken in addition to asking them to cover their mouth, if that feels safe to request. But this guy did none of these. He wanted me to be accountable to him without taking any self-accountability.
So I replied back to him, "Are you being accountable for that outfit?", which I think was a pretty good comeback.
His stop came, and he got off the bus, offering a "Fuck you!" as he walked away outside the bus, which is the ultimate coward's retreat. I continued to my stop, now feeling awful about the interaction.
*
They say that "hurt people hurt people", and beside being an easy to remember phrase, it is also truthful, but why? In my own experience, when I was suffering in the past as a young adult, I wanted one of two things: comfort or revenge. The sad thing is that when others tried to actually comfort me, I would push them away, because my suffering had become my identity, and I didn't know who I was without it.
One of the reasons Keshav and I want to leave Los Angeles is because people are suffering a lot in this city. When I talk to visitors from other places, they comment on noticing the same thing--how hostile people are in this town. It feels like everyone is angry with everyone else sometimes, with the result being that there is no longer any civility.
In the past, things were far from ideal, but there was an agreement to be respectful and polite out in public--to treat your fellow man or woman not as a friend, but perhaps as a fellow traveler. There was more of a sense of connection with others, whether during a commute or as an audience member for live theater, and this feeling contributed positively to one's experience outside of their home.
Today, in Los Angeles, that is nearly non-existent. Rather that seeing others as fellow travelers, we see them as competition at the least, or threats at the worst. Other people are obstacles to either avoid or to confront as we make our way back to our safe home fortresses.
The value of a civil society is that the attitude towards others is grounded in giving them the "benefit of the doubt", ensuring that any judgements about their actions will be influenced by a healthy dose of compassion. In an un-civil society, we no longer give others the benefit of the doubt, instead we see their actions as intrusions to be avoided or called out. Compassion is not a part of the response, leaving judgements to have full rein.
You can imagine the difference in responses from these two ways of looking at things. In a civil society, people say "Excuse me" or "Pardon me", recognizing that a shared space will include other people, and that none of us has an exclusive right-of-way through the crowd. Fran Lebowitz is famous for using the phrase "Pretend it's a city!" when she encounters un-civil behavior in her hometown of Manhattan. She has spoken of how, in the past, New Yorkers moved along the sidewalks adhering to an unspoken contract that you had a responsibility to watch where you were going and co-navigate with the others using the sidewalk to get where they were going.
Nowadays, there is little co-navigation, as pedestrians shut out their surroundings with headphones, eyes locked on their phones as if to say, "It is your responsibility to navigate around ME!
The guy on the bus may have had a point in that, even when clearing my throat, I should cover my mouth as a sign of respect for others. But he did not communicate his upset to me in a civil way--his question did not come across as a reminder of my civic responsibility to care about others, but rather as a judgement that I was disrespectful, and even negligent, when I "coughed in his face".
I had a choice in the moment. I could have not stepped into the story he had written about me, and instead apologized and thanked him for reminding me of my responsibility to others. But I didn't. I chose to attack back, because in that moment, when faced with his contempt, I hated him.
I suppose that in some way my responses to him only confirmed his belief that other people are threats to either be avoided or called out. His parting "Fuck you!" was less to me, I suspect, and more likely directed at a world where he does not feel loved or noticed. Perhaps it feels to him as though the whole world has been coughing in his face for a long time. As a therapist, I get a sense of these things. And as a therapist, I have the ability to know exactly what response will either heal or destroy.
*
When I got home last night, I was in a troubled state. I had intended to get stoned and make dinner, but I began to reconsider my intention to get stoned because I was worried that it might "turn" on me, given how I felt. But I actively chose to shake it off and get stoned anyway, and fortunately it did not turn.
The pot helped me to relax and gave me access to different perspectives on what happened. I was able to see the guy on the bus as he showed up--wounded rather than fucked up--and I actively worked to bring some compassion to both how I thought of him, and how I thought of my response to him.
In these instances, I generally feel like shit afterwards, as though some vague theory of me being a terrible person were finally validated. But that is not even close to the truth of me, or of anyone else for that matter. Father Gregory Boyle, of Homeboy Industries, writes that he sees people as being "ill" rather than evil or bad. Some are more ill than others, but he admits that we are all somewhat ill.
Illness, he writes, shows up when someone misses out on feeling cherished. That feeling initially needs to come from our primary caregivers, but sadly we live in a culture where primary caregivers often cannot even cherish themselves. Father Greg points correctly to how illness in people comes from illness in the culture, and then perpetuates in a cycle until it is hard to tell what came first.
We currently have a government that is run by ill people who are unwilling to have compassion for others with whom they disagree. They are normalizing seeing other people as threats, especially if they don't look like you or think like you. Is it any wonder that cruelty is trickling down to the masses? Don't you think our current lack of civility is a reflection of our leaders' words and actions? When you behave in a disrespectful way towards people in this country, regardless of whether they are legal citizens, how can you then demand that these same citizens respond in a civil way?
I suspect that we are all doing the best we can in life, even when our best is not very good. Giving others the benefit of the doubt includes the assumption that they are doing their best. Our response to someone's best is going to very different than our response to what we perceive is their worst.
In a society without self-accountability, we instead see a lot of finger-pointing. Sometimes I imagine how different the world would be in just one second if everyone focused as much attention on their own behavior as they do on others'. Could you imagine?
At home last night, I had calmed down enough to access my choices moving forward. I did a "Loving Kindness" meditation, sending the guy on the bus wishes for "peace, happiness, and lack of suffering". The goal of this kind of meditation is to heal the sufferer, which in this case was me, but it can't hurt to send those we think hurt us some positive thoughts towards their own wellbeing. I expressed gratitude that I did not get more fully pulled into a conflict with him, as I could have. And I resolved to be more mindful of how my actions on the bus may be disrespectful to others at times. I talked to my husband about this, and I chose to write about it, and after I finish this post, I will set aside the incident and focus on my intention coming out of it.
I suspect that, this morning, I am doing better than the guy from the bus is. I suspect that he will continue to see threats all around him in the world today. That may motivate me to never want to encounter him ever again, but it will also motivate me to move more compassionately through the world.
I had power last night in the moment, but I gave it away to him. That is not failing, it is being human. Today, I can make different choices. Just like turning leftover sausage gravy into a new dish.
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