I had a rant but I calmed down

When something on the Internet pushes my button, I have a 24 hour rule about writing about it. I give myself 24 hours to think about it and if I am still feeling not quite rational about it. I give myself another 24 hours to cool off.

I really try to see things from other people’s points of view as hard as that may seem at the time.

I learned that many times the person yelling at you isn’t yelling at you. They are venting about something else that is going on in their lives that you happened to be the fallout recipient because you happen to be there when whatever went wrong that set them off.

If I was in the wrong or I made the mistake, I would own up to it and apologize which would diffuse the situation often. I have confused more than one director with this. They were ready for a fight and I would say this is entirely my fault, how can I fix it for you? Which put them off their footing and had them stop and think about the problem.

Sometimes people just want someone to acknowledge what they have to say and listen to them rather than dismissing what they say.

And there are some people in this world who think so little of themselves that the only way they are going to feel better/superior is to make someone else feel bad/small/wrong. Those people I have very little patience with and don’t have much to do with for my own sanity. My exception is when I can help the person who is being belittled who has done nothing to deserve it. And now that I have apparently reached elder statesman status, my words do have some weight to them.

When I was younger I did swing for the fences and argue all kinds of things but the more I did it, the more I saw how futile it was. I wasn’t going to change their minds so why beat my head against the wall? One of my teachers at Yale told me that she saw I had a skill of listening that I needed to use more. She was the one that taught me to really listen and let the other person know they had been heard and most situations will be defused.

I guess you get calmer as you get older or rather life experience changes how you perceive things. That which uses to be so important becomes less so at time goes on and you can take a look at it with some distance.

Regrets, I have a few but not that many because what has happened to me in my life is what has gotten me to where I am now. I am the sum of a life lived and being lived. Are there things that I wish had gone another way? Sure but again wouldn’t be where I am without those bumps in the road.

So I look on the Internet and see something that is happening that irks me. I give myself time to see if it is just an irk or something I want to put a voice to. 9 times out of 10 it is an irk and goes away but the 10th one gets put here for anyone who cares to read it.

And that is what I did today. I hope you got as much out of it as I did thinking about it.

I am grateful for the teachers in my life who have helped me become the person I am today.