It causes such bad feelings and I've always wondered why.

Why not just cast it away like some dust that blew down an empty, unwatched hallway and came to rest on your sleeve? Why not brush it off, and forget about it? Because pettiness is an insult to everything. Period.

We go to school to learn a wider vision and a broader view. Pettiness insults that. We have to learn a better way than our parents knew, God bless them, because they didn't know what we know. We raise families and try to lift them up to see others in need, as we ourselves are in need. Pettiness demeans that. We try to teach honesty above all, even if we only understand it in part ourselves. Pettiness laughs at that. We earn a living and try to be honest so that the money is earned and deserved. And all of it comes together for us at night when our heads hit the pillow and we listen to our own breathing and wait for sleep to come over us with a sound like feathers nestling in.

But does peace and rest come for them so easily? Can it, after saying such self-serving things? When, in the face of others' good intentions, they simply reach for a rung-up, a one-up moment for themselves at the cost of confusing people who are hoping for something good, something better? Do they really care so little for others that nothing is sacred except their own pettiness? Their own need for attention and validation? Is their vacuousness so vast that nothing can reach across it to put them at ease? No kind act? No genuine goodness? No hope for something higher, cleaner and, yes, just a little better? Can nothing expiate their emptiness except apparently more and more of it? More pettiness? Can they ever pass up the chance? Can they, just once, let it go and enjoy the flow of new ideas they didn't try to negate or circumnavigate? Hey, call me crazy, but there is a Rubicon one must cross on the way out of pettiness... hope, and a little faith. It's a leap, I know. It's the line in the sand they dare not cross. They drew the line themselves. On one side is unhappiness familiar. On the other is something else unfamiliar. The devil they know holds them in a full-body embrace, like a lover just on the verge, but never too near to actually to walk them over the edge.

Hope is the river you must cross. Faith is the bridge you cannot see.

As you know, it takes a leap of some kind. But, remember as you leap to something, you also leap from something. Perhaps that is the propelling secret.