Elite

CHAPTER 6Be Self-Aware

We’ve all been there. You’re at a movie, trying to enjoy your popcorn and a good flick. The room goes dark, and it’s perfectly quiet as words on a blackened screen begin to tell you the timeframe and setting of the movie. Just then, like lightning cracking, the guy in the row behind you starts opening the tinfoil-like packaging on his candy. Okay, understandable – annoying, but understandable. A rational human being would only take about five seconds to open a candy wrapper, but sadly, that is not the case in this movie theater. The invisible menace behind you spends what seems like an hour making the horrifically distracting noise. As if that’s not enough, he begins eating the candy, if eating is even the word. He smashes and destroys the candy viciously between his mighty jaws, all the while keeping his mouth wide open so the sound of the carnage booms through all of eternity.

As he smacks in your ear, you wonder what went wrong with this man’s childhood? Was he abandoned on the doorstep of the fire department and then found by wolves before firefighters could come to rescue him? Did he escape from the confines of North Korea as a boy? Was he involved in a shipwreck, leaving him stranded for months floating atop the ocean in a dinghy with a giant tiger on board? How does a person remain so clueless about how he’s severely hampering the cinematic experience of the people around him? It’s a classic case of the person who lacks self-awareness.

Self-awareness ...