You know the days you’re running late and every traffic light is red? It it just so happens while you drive someone cuts in right in front of you! You’re tempted to tell the guy a ‘piece of your mind’… You get to the mall and it happens to be senior citizens’ discount day. Though you’re in a rush you wait to let the senior citizen go before you. The walker they’re using doesn’t help much.
I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find myself thinking about what I could do. Perhaps reciprocate the middle finger salute I just received. Or, roll my window down and give the driver who cut me off a nasty tongue lash for a reprimand. Maybe trip the granny that is moving at one meter per hour, so I can be on my way. I don’t follow through, of course. It would be totally out of character. The fact that you think some things doesn’t warrant you to act on them.
The truth is I’m sometimes too quick to voice against injustices against me. Why is it easy for me to talk about how someone or a service provider mistreated me and I’m not so quick to speak up when I’m the perpetrator?! The golden rule explicitly states, ‘do to others what you’d like them do to you’. We twist the golden rule with our actions when we do to others what they’ve done to us but we don’t want them to do to us what they’ve just done to us.
Before I complain about how someone has cut me off in traffic, I should remember that I probably did the same to someone else at another time. Before I start contemplating tripping the granny I should consider the fact that on a day I wasn’t in a rush I was in the way for someone who was. Before I criticize the service provider I should consider how I can be a difficult client. Today I’m reminded that for the one finger I’m pointing there are three pointing back at me. Before I pass judgment I must remember that I am sometimes the guy who violates me. I should remember that I switch roles between the victim and perpetrator… This is a note to myself and anyone else like me; whatever you do don’t to trip that granny!