More on "Niceness"

One of the interesting things I note is how much we let other people, particularly “not nice” people, control our lives.

Sometimes people behave in ways that offend you. But whose problem is this offending? Certainly not the person who is “not nice” – for long after the “offense”, they have gone on with their lives, oblivious to how you are feeling about the interaction. You are the one who has the problem – it is your life that is turned inside out and upside down. Really, when people offend you, it is because you have chosen, yes chosen, to be offended. You have allowed someone else to control how you feel, and therefore how you act.

Think of when someone “bad-drives” you. They do the act, then they drive off – do you think that they spend one moment wondering how you feel? No, they are happy – they got ahead in the line and for them, all is well. They are on their way, focused on getting to their destination as quickly as possible. They have not spared one thought for you and how you are feeling. However, you who were bad-driven – you get upset, want to bad drive them back, and then for the rest of the day tell everyone about the bad-driving incident, thus reliving the experience, and the feelings, over and over! You are the one with the problem! If you had chosen to simply laugh at the bad-driver, wave him/her on and maybe even allow him/her free space for the bad-driving, you would not have a problem. You actually would not have been offended! Note that in this scenario the bad-driver no longer controls you – you have chosen a different way of being, and you therefore have a different outcome.

Another common reaction to “not nice” people is to spend time predicting dire consequences for them if they don’t change their ways. We get very concerned and emotional about their well-being. We then move on to prescribe some change that that person MUST make, and get very disturbed if they don’t. Again, who has the problem? Not “so and so”. It is we who have the problem. We are trying to control others’ lives, and in the process, they control ours. For we expend a lot of energy focused on them – instead of on ourselves, where the change really needs to be. If we stop for a moment and observe ourselves, we will notice that when we criticize others for some behaviour, we will see that we ourselves behave like this. The criticism is self-criticism. What we don’t like in others is what we don’t like in ourselves. “What we see is what we are seeing with”. Perhaps the fundamental truth of the “not nice” people we see in our lives is that we are really seeing the “not-niceness” in ourselves.