I don’t know what happened this past week, but everybody seemed so grumpy. The weather changed from ten degrees short of hell to a comfortable mid-70 cool spell, but for some reason nobody enjoyed it. Yesterday in particular–Friday the 13th, no less–the negativity was everywhere.
First thing in the morning, as I was pulling out into an empty road after patiently waiting my turn, somebody magically materialized from nowhere and I was somehow in her road. She honked from behind me, pulled alongside me on my left, stopped her car while the traffic was starting to build again, and hurled invective at me from her open passenger window. I slowed down beside her, though I didn’t hear a thing she said because my window was closed. I politely tried to convince her to keep moving and not cause any problems with the people around us, by waving my hand in a general “go on ahead” manner. I wasn’t in as much of a hurry as she apparently was. She finally pulled off after a few lengthy seconds, still on a rant; I pulled over until the traffic cleared again.
A coworker had escaped to the peace and quiet of the restroom after a caller had given her a unanimous dressing down on the phone lines. She told me it had been like that all day, with nobody seemingly content with the change in the temperature.
On the heels of the now infamous Jet Blue Airlines incident involving possibly equally grumpy flight attendant Steven Slater and a harried passenger (in which he made a classy exit from the situation, and the plane, by deploying the inflatable emergency chute and nabbing beer before doing his jump, sit and slide onto the tarmac), I wonder why we are all so testy. Emotion doesn’t solve problems: actions do. Anger only traumatizes the body and spirit. Anybody from a monk to a Jedi can tell us that. A good count to ten, a step back or a self-inflicted slap upside the head might do wonders for many of the bad attitudes out there. Long-term misbehavior, however, is still best resolved by quiet and effectively rendered inconveniences designed to redirect the unwanted behavior into new and good ones. I think that, if you can solve a problem without raising either your voice or your blood pressure, that’s a sign of true humanity.
Oh, and next time you get in bad traffic and/or call customer service, remember that you’re okay, and the other person is okay, too. It’s just the situation that stinks sometimes.
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 