We are The People

I was co-leading an educational event last week at Prost Brewing in Denver. Our group had the back room reserved which is farthest from the bar. As with many of the tap houses popping up and around Colorado, it’s mostly a bar service establishment meaning there is limited staff and you order your beer or snacks directly from the bartenders. At the end of our event, my friend Brenda suggested we take all the glasses up to the bar as I was collecting all the trash to find a trash can. I wholeheartedly agreed. As I walked out of the room with a pile of glasses a guy says to me, “You know there are people who do that.” I replied, “I am one of the people who does that!” He looked at me confused and said, “I mean there are other people who do that.” I replied, “I am happy to do it” and continued on my way up to the bar to drop the glasses off, filtering a lot of snarky things that came into my mind. I was reminded of a quote by Brené Brown from her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead:

Everyone wants to know why customer service has gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know why customer behavior has gone to hell in a handbasket.

And, then I thought about the preamble to our constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

And, I thought, We ARE “We the people.” We are collectively responsible for Tranquility, Welfare, and the Blessings of Liberty and Posterity. We are The People. It’s not “those people” who are separate from us in some way we define by class or position or race. It’s We The People. I believe that if we started behaving more as if we are “We The People” we would fundamentally shift our culture. We’d be more connected and engaged, we'd be more compassionate, and we'd lend a hand more when we had one rather than sitting back and saying, “there are people who do that.” Let’s stand up and BE one of The People who do that. We are The People.