Last week’s post has been on my mind every day since the ink began to set in my skin.
I’ve found myself in a quagmire of anxiety with every asshole I’ve encountered. I keep asking the same question. Why does this person deserve compassion? Why does James Eagan Holmes* deserve my compassion? Does Andreas Lubitz* deserve my compassion? The answer isn’t important, I’ve been asking the wrong question. To question who is deserving (of anything-not to mention the compassion from some dude in Oakland) is arrogant folly. I learned this lesson when I almost lost my temper behind the wheel. Oakland/San Francisco must be in a two-way tie for jay walking capital of the U.S., if anyone were keeping track of that sort of thing. I’ve ranted about the subject before. One of the regular habits of these jackasses is to run out in the middle of the street and slow to a walk while still in front of your car. Good times, so fun! Well, a couple did this to me on Friday morning. While the young lady kept running, the dude behind her strolled the entire width of the busy street. Even as several cars screeched to a halt, he never picked up the pace even after I slammed on my brakes and lost a bit of rubber to keep from ending his life. As I called him all sorts of muthafuckas from behind the wheel, he just looked at me. He didn’t flip me off (that’s common for jaywalkers in the Bay Area), he didn’t say a word, and he didn’t raise an eyebrow. He just looked in my eyes as he kept his stroll going and it was clear that he gave not a fuck. That left me with two choices. 1.) Shift to 1st, cook some rubber, and mow him down in the middle of the street at 10:30 in the morning. (“All the years if I pull this trigger!”) 2. ) Breathe deeply, stay cool, recognize he wasn’t worth my anger, and just keep it moving. I chose door number 2. I kept thinking about that look on his face. He was truly indifferent about the fact that he was endangering his life and the lives of drivers that could have ended up colliding because of him. I took a lesson from that experience. While I’m sitting round wondering how to have patience and compassion for all, many people are not expecting nor craving my patience or compassion. The jaywalking, Mr. DGAF‘s look implied that he was unconcerned with my level of patience or compassion for him. He didn’t desire/need either from me. That’s the lesson I took from that experience.
It’s worth mentioning… I hate it when people tell a story about a look someone gave them that involves projection of their personal issues when the person could have just had a booger rubbing against their nostril. This isn’t that. I’m not leaping to an assumption of what Mr. DGAF thought based on his look. Based on his actions (did I mention that the actual crosswalk was about 100 feet away) and a look that said nothing, he didn’t give a fuck. That can be verified by anyone that saw the incident. I’m not just telling you how his look made me feel.
What does that mean for my pledge to have patience and compassion for all? The most memorable lesson that I learned from Sesame Street was to tackle one task at a time. My last few weekends have been good ones because I’ve been able to balance productivity (chores) with creativity (dance) and social networking (you know the real kind, in people’s faces). There was an episode wherein some furry creature (Elmo?) was frustrated by the enormous stack of homework in front of him. Some human (Gordon?) came along and pushed all of the books off screen and placed one of the books in front of the furry dude. The lesson was to focus on one element of a huge undertaking before allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by the weight of the total endeavor. Well, with the help of Mr. DGAF’s lesson I’ve decided to focus on one element of my pledge before doing it all. It’s impossible to hug the entire world at once. I’ve decided to start with the people within arm’s length. There are plenty of people that have and will come to me in need of my patience and compassion. I will do my best to give it to them. Over time, I’ll be able to give patience and compassion to those that haven’t requested it, to the DGAFs of the world. But, that’s further on up the road on a very long journey.
*Feel free to perform your own searches on the people mentioned above. I won’t add to their notoriety by adding a link to this post.