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Thursday, August 18, 2005
'Hello, my name is Ben and I'm not always right'
Over the last few days, things have happened to shake my personal paradigm, and I think I'm a better person as a result. Let me explain.
I think I'm right about most things most of the time. At work I often think the decisions other people make are the wrong ones, and that, if I'd been consulted, things would have worked out better. When I'm driving I often chastise other drivers for having done something wrong, such as not indicate or being in the wrong lane at a roundabout. I haven't read a book for about 6 years now because I get stuck on the first page, thinking the way the author has constructed certain sentences to be clumsy, or incorrect. I even question chord changes in songs, thinking if only they'd gone up instead of down it would have been a perfect song.
I doubt I'm alone in this way of looking at the world, it's probably an attitude we naturally develop over time, a healthy arrogance that enables us to have confidence in ourselves and what we do.
But, as I said, a few things have made me doubt this recently. Today was the one that really did it. I was driving along the narrow lanes round my house heading to work, when I rounded a bend a little too enthusiastically. A red van was heading towards me and the driver signalled quite forcefully for me to get over onto my side of the road. At first I was annoyed: how dare he tell me how to drive, I knew damn well where I should be, and I was getting over to my side anyway, I was just in the middle of the road for a little bit.
A moment or two later, after I'd calmed down, I realised that I've done exactly what the red van driver had just done to me on many occasions, and probably made lots of people angry and annoyed. And the red van driver was right: I shouldn't have been in the middle of the road, I should have been on my side.
So he was entitled to point and mouth 'get over', and I should have just thought, 'yep, you're right, sorry'.
So I tried this attitude out on the rest of the journey and it felt good: I didn't get cross when someone did something wrong - people are entitled to make mistakes, and who am I to judge them - and I didn't get cross when people told me off for doing something wrong - I'm entitled to make mistakes, and who am I to stop people judging me.
So I'm going to give this attitude a bit more of a go for the rest of the week. It might seem a bit feeble to some of you, or a bit submissive, but I do get quite angry sometimes and that's not good, so maybe taking away the pressure of having to be right all the time might help me be a better person.
I'm sure you'll let me know if you notice any improvement.
.....posted at 10:09 am permalink
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