Dearest Readers,
Here is the thing about personal growth: we have to be willing to accept that we have shortcomings and we have to be willing to change. This fact usually produces an “ugh” in most of us and a “la-la-la I can’t hear you” response complete with hands over the ears for maximum effect. But if one is seeking Peace one must be willing to look within at the good, the bad and the ugly.
As some of you know, I’m heading on the road in a few weeks for a lengthy stint of travel. The cat needs a sitter and so I put the word out on a local Listserv and received a number of responses. Even on the best of days I am overwhelmed by e-mail. I feel like Newman, Jerry’s enemy on Seinfeld, the postal worker who, when explaining why workers sometimes go “postal” speaks about the never-ending influx of mail.
That overwhelm means that sometimes my responses are going to come across as curt, or short and, apparently, arrogant. Yesterday I received an email response from a woman I’ve never met, a potential cat-sitter, to whom I sent a message basically saying “thanks but no thanks.” Her message?
“Thanks for your arrogant reply.”
Arrogance? Yes, I have it. I’m the first to admit it. But when someone else points it out, well, it doesn’t feel so good. I have to say I was pretty shocked.
Of course my first response was to be hurt, then to be angry, then I thought of all the rude things I could write back. Then I did the icky work. The work no one really likes to do. I took responsibility for my actions.
According to the dictionary on this computer, arrogance means “an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities.” What it doesn’t say is that arrogance usually comes from fear. My own arrogance has been bred by my insecurity. My deep inferiority complex actually created the opposite behaviour in me. I became an ego-maniac.
The good news is once I admitted the shortcoming I could then begin to change and be changed. Until I could see the problem there was no solution.
So I sent a reply to that woman who called me arrogant. I told her my response likely came across the way it did because I am a little overwhelmed at the moment and then I asked her for a re-do. I re-wrote her a message, taking the time to thank her for her offer, explaining that I’d found someone else and wishing her all the best.
Humbling, yes. More than I owed her, perhaps. The Path to Peace, absolutely.
And she wrote me back and thanked me.
Inspiring Message of the Day: When I clean up my side of the street I am giving my Self the gift of freedom from fear and shame.
