City of fear

I've found that this city has a lot of fear.

"Well, yes," you might say. "That's typical of big old broken cities."

Granted, there is a lot of goodness growing here. There is a lot going on in the community, with people coming together and building it back up. There is positivity, and there is hope. Many natives of this city tell me it is definitely on an upswing.



But there is still this sense of fear. Or at least, an unwillingness to trust - a distrust. That might be more accurate.

Case in point. You've probably had the situation in which you are walking down a sidewalk, and you hear someone walking behind you. You subconsciously move to one side of the path, so that they can pass you if they wish.

But sometimes if the person is far enough behind you, they don't bother to pass you. Because that would bring up the awkwardness of speeding up their walking, just in order to pass by you, and sometimes that's just inconvenient. You know, narrow sidewalks and such.

I find myself in the situation of walking behind people on occasion. Specifically, the "too far behind them to pass them" situation. So I keep to my steady pace, and just stay at my location on our mutual sidewalk journey.

This, however, bothers some people. They don't like having someone walk behind them.

I've seen several different people look around and gaze at me nervously as I walk a safe distance behind them on my route to or from my office.

I don't make a habit of appearing frightening, stalkerish, overwhelming, or creepy. Maybe it's unconscious, but I highly doubt that I look scary enough to disconcert the average businessman in suit and tie.

It doesn't matter what I look like: if I'm nonchalantly walking behind someone, they don't trust me.

What has this world become, in which a random person on the sidewalk is automatically a potential mugger?

Now, maybe there's just some protocol that I'm missing. Perhaps there actually is an unspoken rule that if you're at least 100 feet behind someone, it's really just better to hurry up your pace and brush past them to make them feel more at ease. I'm new here; I'm sure there are customs I'm not aware of.

But really. Not to be overly negative, but we have lost our once-natural sense of trust in society.

And that's very sad.