Dear Friends,
“What in the hell just happened?”
The man at the Tesla charging station came walking forcefully towards me. I had opened my car door and gently made contact with his car.
“This could be thousands of dollars to fix.”
As he approached me, I took a few breaths and showed him the knock was so light that there was no visible scratch, mark, or dent.
That did not seem to matter. He continued to berate me.
First, it was very clear he cared about the look of his car. Second, he seemed to enjoy being on the side of the good. He was right, and I had done something wrong, and he was going to make sure I got that, even after he knew there was no visible impact.
While at first I thought, “What a jerk!,” I reflected on how often I have done the same.
Someone has made a mistake or error, and I have relished in the fact that my life was negatively impacted, and that they should feel bad about themselves. “Someone has hurt me, and I am going to get all I can out of this situation.”
We reinforce the belief that we are the “good ones” and they are the “not good ones.”
But what if the other person was just “us” in another form? What if we viewed the person who made a mistake not as “other,” but as an aspect of ourselves, how would we respond?
Sure, there might be insurance forms to fill out or dents to fix, but righteousness separates … and we all end up on both sides of this dynamic — as the one who made a mistake and the one who was impacted by a mistake. We cannot choose only one position.
So as we go about our day and we find ourselves on one side or the other of a car dent or an emotional dent or a mistake, may we tend to the situation from a sense of shared humanity, instead of righteousness.
Afterall, maybe everyone we meet is just us in another form.
And how we relate to them is how we relate to ourselves.
Blessings,
SOREN
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So good, Soren. My wife and I were recently in a gnarly fender bender. I got seriously triggered, but in the process realized it was all my stuff. The man who rear-ended us (an ancient looking fellow who could've been my grandpa) was a mirror reflected the anger that had been simmering under the surface. Him hitting us didn't cause my anger, it revealed anger that was already there. I'm grateful for it, now. Not that my car is still in the shop, but because I'm a little freer now because of what happened. Thanks for sharing your story.