The whipping post...

It’s slightly awkward for me to publicly reflect on myself, even behind the semi-anonymous veil of the internet, but I think that I’m a little more laid-back and easygoing than most people. I really do enjoy and relish life’s challenges; I imagine that if I had been born into a life of luxury and ease that I would be miserable. I learned it while I was fairly young and I still constantly hear it reinforced that it is the resistance in life and how we handle it that helps us grow to be the sort of people that we aspire to be.

It makes perfect sense from the big picture point-of-view but every once in awhile someone crosses my path that no matter how hard I try to like them and treat them well, they make me want to hit them with a big stick. I’ve got a guy that works the opposite shift as me that seems hell-bent on trying to get everyone else fired…or at least that’s his reasoning as best that I can figure. He hunts around for the slightest mistake that anyone else has made and then writes a hurried letter and runs to one of the supervisors with it talking about how he is the consummate professional who consistently goes above and beyond in his job…blah blah blah. For months now he has been shaking my hand and smiling and telling me, “I’ve noticed no problems, errors, etc. Good job.” But all the while he’s been documenting every uncrossed T or undotted i’s and reporting it. Nobody really takes him seriously but it’s just the principle of the matter that bothers me. And lately it’s taken a turn for the worse. He made a very serious mistake the other day and blamed it on us. My alibi was that I was sound asleep in my oh-so-cozy bed when it all went down. Now that the truth is coming to light, he’s started desperately lashing out at everyone.

I do not believe at all what a lot of folks say about difficult people in their lives, that they were put there to test them. That’s pretty arrogant actually. I believe that we came here with the understanding that we would face opposition and challenge and that one of the primary causes would be our fellow men’s weakness or mistakes. I’ve spent a great deal of time and mental effort in examining and trying to find a solution to my problem and one of the unintended consequences of my introspection has been a deeper perspective of my own behavior in life.

I know that I’ve been the cause of quite a few people’s heartache, anger, or even physical pain and it kills me now to think back on what a jerk I used to be. I’ve brawled with complete strangers, insulted and demeaned authority figures, toyed with more than one wonderful girl’s emotions; the list goes on and on. Starting about the time that I got out of high school, I started to try a lot harder to become a better person and behave in a manner more consistent with the ultimate authority’s expectations. There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not grateful for the seemingly endless pool of patience and love that my parents drew upon while raising me, and not just them but also everyone that contributed in some fashion to the great (and awful, to steal a quote haha) awakening of my conscience.

I’ve concluded that my influence on my co-worker would probably be most effective if it were one of non-reaction. Anger tends to incite further anger, and I know that at least sometimes the opposite is true. I’ll prepare my defense in the event that he doesn’t come around in the time that we work together but hope that I will never have to play my cards. That sort of strategy won the Cold War haha, maybe it’ll help in Pete’s War. Stay tuned.