at MY age?
it’s been said that ya can’t teach an old dog new tricks…I’m no longer sure about that…tonight I got quite a few steps closer to learning “tolerance”…I spent a fair amount of time chatting with various people I’m not all that fond of and I nearly enjoyed it…to some degree what I’ve done is imagine the shoe being on the other foot–THAT makes all the difference…If someone is being genuinely nice to me when I suspect (or know for a fact) that they don’t like me, how can I return those emotions with disdain? Maybe what I mean is that I’m gonna “kill ’em with kindness”; Maybe I don’t quite know WHAT I mean…Does it PHYSICALLY hurt to be nice (and/or tolerate) people that yer not crazy about? NO. And if they’re willing to be nice and/or tolerate YOU, then perhaps reciprocation is in order…It belatedly occurs to me that *I* just might not be the easiest person to like…and, like some people, I wanna be liked…none of this applies to the Woman who trashed me on Facebook btw…I’m closer to accepting the idea that just maybe ya might have to kinda sorta in a way stretch the Truth a bit or risk hurting someone’s feelings…and I don’t like having MY feelings hurt, so if yer “fibbing” to me, I’m OK with that–I think…I might go see a certain group tomorrow night, even though I had said when invited “You’d have to pay me…” That was mean and unfair; again I imagine the shoe on the other foot…*I* don’t think they’re as good as they could be (how’s THAT for restraint?) but I support my friends, especially since they’ve recently supported ME–5 out of 6 members of the group are friends of mine…Suddenly I’m very tired and having trouble thinking clearly, maybe I’ve made my points…it’s bedtime…
ADDENDUM–went to see a band, didn’t necessarily want or need to sit in, but nobody likes to be told “no”, with or without “thank you” added to it, so when they insisted, I sat in…then I went to an O.M.–same exact thing…not at all sure how many bands I’m gonna go see tonight…Going somewhere where even ONE unbalanced person doesn’t want me to be just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me…even if five more or less normal people want me to be there…BINGO–a internal quandry…
You have grown more in his life lesson than you have in the past or will in the future. It is called humility and it is a very difficult part of the human character to accept let alone master.
I have not mastered it, and perhaps never will—but I have been exactly where you are describing. To know what is truly behind a person’s smile, their words and their deeds is impossible to really fathom…you have to squelch personal history with the person, put the rumors you have heard about them way back in the mental closet and fight down the bile that wells up from within because you know you are lying to yourself that you really and truly mean the polite friendliness you are showing this person that is probably fighting the same inner deamons to be returning the fake niceties—
I have actually burst out laughing at myself in the middle of one of these encounters with a guy that was “dating” my ex wife for forcing myself to be civil to this guy at a mutual friend’s party. He somehow knew without me saying it that I exploded from the effort I was exerting not to punch him in the face. He pointed at me and began laughing, saying—“yeah, I can’t do this either…” We ended up becoming the best of friends over that one “fake friendship” encounters.
Life is funny like that.
You are lucky to have the capacity to push all the negative feelings aside when you come up on people you know are talking smack behind your back or whatever the friction is…you are a bigger person than I am, Scooter. :love:
Good one, Scooter. All that kind of stuff always seemed quite alien to me. That is, I never had the kind of internal quandry you mention. Liking people on an individual level comes easily to me and there is no forcing or other agenda. Someone has to do something REALLY bad for me not to feel at least tolerant of them. For those I don’t like at all, I simply will have no association with them whatever.