A Pop Quiz

It’s so easy to be nice to people when things are going well. It’s also easy to be nice to people when they are nice to me. I’m finding it difficult to be nice to people when they aren’t nice to me, actually they weren’t even not nice to me directly. If that makes any sense.  This particular case has to deal with the client for whom our company works for. Throughout the past year this person has managed to piss off virtually everyone I work with, including myself on several occasions. But I always seem to be able to get over it and go back to a state of indifference at best.  And to be honest they hadn’t done a whole lot to impact me directly. Until now. Now they crossed the line of what I call acceptable and they have taken away what I deem to be best part of my job; the flexibility.  Without going into details, we are working on having it resolved but I am unsure of the outcome.

If it doesn’t get resolved I will hold a grudge against this person who I sense has done me a big injustice. But I know it isn’t the right thing to do. I know that my discomfort is causes by my resistance to the way things are, my inability to accept my loss. It makes me angry, to the point that if I explain it to someone I get really worked up.  I’m living in the story and the drama has taken over. I know of things I could do to get over it, things I have read, heard, maybe even practiced; but it is so much easier to stay angry and upset and blame this person for how I feel.

But even writing this helps change the perspective. Off the top of my head here is my plan to get over this and move on. First I’m going to try to understand that it’s not personal, what this person has done has nothing to do with me.  Then I could add in a dash of gratitude for having a stress-free job with great coworkers. After that I may remember that this is a lesson, a great opportunity to grow and know myself even more. Even better, it’s a chance to practice what on paper seems so easy. Forgivensss. How can I think the world is going to change if I can’t do it myself, if  I am perpetuating the anger and resentment versus learning to accept and forgive? I must really be delusional if I think the outside will change before the inside does.  But it happens all the time and the more I talk about it, think about it, get all worked up over it, the worse it gets.  Living in the story. Happens to me all the time.

One thing that always helps me is to think of people who have done what I currently think is the impossible. Like the American man who spent what I believe was 27 years of his life as a falsley accused political prisoner in China, to finally be freed and to be grateful for his time imprisoned and to hold no resentment against his captors. Or the man who learned to forgive and help out the person who randomly murdered his son in a nightclub, as he knew the guy was also hurting and if he didn’t help him there would be two families destroyed, not just one. Or the guy from New Orleans who was deliberately accused and convicted of rape and murder and sent to prison, only to learn true freedom. Shit happens, its called life. Some people deal with it a lot better than people like me. If I can’t get over someone taking away a perk of my job, I sure better pray no one sends me to prison for something  I didn’t do!

To be honest what always helps the most is to step back from it, to really look at it from a different frame of mind. Only then do I see how small I am being and how worked up I get over  things.  I’m not advocating letting people walk over you or not standing up for your rights, but in the case when you can’t change the way things are, you either accept or you don’t  One option is life, the other is not.

The real test is tomorrow when I see this person at work. Will he be a teacher or just a dumb ass jerk who pisses me off every time I think about him? I’m not sure.

Happy Journeys.