Useless actions

 While walking down the road i take daily back home, Today i passed an auto which I thought was parking down the side of the road, but the vehicle jerked slightly when i went ahead to cross it. I instinctively put my hand up asking him to slow down. Believe it or not, If anyone has to be blamed for you having to read this, It is the guy who was driving that auto.

Almost immediately after I made the gesture, I was overflowing with guilt about how much of bigot a I am. I have given my father too much shit for doing the same. My father would cross a road, even after seeing a car in a small distance, and would put out his hand as if to gesture the driver to slow down. I absolutely hated it, every single time. First, the driver would anyway slow down, if he was going to, since he has seen the almost 6 foot body, crossing the road. If not, the act of putting up the gesture was not going to magically convince him to slow down. So what is the point of that gesture ?

Maybe I was over-reacting, but this extreme reaction, comes from my experiences as a driver (.. clears throat.. ) of a cycle. I absolutely hated people who crossed the road as if the road belonged to them, when there is heavy traffic. After all, Of all the vehicles, regaining the lost momentum in a cycle is the most draining.  Almost all of those POSs had one common gesture. Did putting that hand out help ? They know I am going to come to screeching halt if I see that the person is about to hit my cycle. By putting that hand out, It just puts out a message that my responsibility in not hitting that person, has now increased. So not only you put me in discomfort, but also somehow made it more of my fault. Ofcourse nobody thinks like this.

But coming back to my point. If everyone knows that the gesture is not doing anything, why do we instinctively do it ? Well.. atleast this one can be termed as an instinct. But certain other examples, have shown me otherwise.

Recently I was coerced into doing the shameful act of registering in a matrimonial site. While writing my own bio, I realized that there is not much I can mention about myself, that is not completely useless. And my expectations were even worse. So I left it with a one liner. Ofcourse the coercers ( is this even a word ? ChatGPT says it is. ) weren't happy with that. The suggestions was to add a line in my bio, saying that I am good-looking, from a good family which has good values. This must have struck the same part of my over-reacting brain, and I protested so much, that they had to step back. Because... who doesn't think that they are good looking ? ( or to be precise, who wouldn't put themselves as good looking in a matrimony site ? ). Also, will any sane person registering in a matrimony site ( I hope we are in that population. I know it is a tiny percentage... ), put themselves as "not from a good family" ? If the answer for either of these is NO, then would anyone put these in their profiles ? The answer to my dismay is... A LOT. Granted that most of these profiles are made by parents, who are just struggling enough with the technology that, they don't really have enough energy to spend on writing a sane bio. But every other profile I see says the same thing as if it adds any information. 

Why are we so in love with words which don't add absolutely any information ? Why do we do actions which don't do anything at all ?

All this reminds me of this excellent scene.

With the risk of turning this into a full rant, I have to clarify that I am not talking about commonly thought of as "useless" things like Small talk, Video games, Writing in this blog etc. All of these serve at least some purpose such as showing an attempt to save a dying conversation, retaining at least a semblance of sanity left and serving as record of how unhinged I used to be, respectively.

Before I start yet another useless story, Goodbye for now.