Day to Day Difficulties

Point one
There are two points that have recently arisen to the point that I keep finding myself having to just stop the backchat, speak some self-forgiveness and remind myself that, this is not who I care to be. This method of stopping and moving, stopping and moving has been a temporary solution, enough to get me through the day, but this is also not how I care to walk through my days. Thus, instead of my usual Sunday morning focus on writing out mind constructs, today I will begin by telling a story, as usual, my side of a story.

In our office, there are about four areas or groups. I like these groups and I like to go into the office and sometimes sit in different chairs or move my chair around to chat with different people, listen to their perspectives and sometimes offer up mine. The first problem I encountered has been a recurring one for the last two years. The office has overhead air-conditioning vents with rotating ceiling fans. Often, when the air conditioning and the fan are going at the same time, I get cold air coming down on my bald head, which causes my body to cool to the point wherein, sometimes I even begin to shiver. Interestingly, the controls to the fan are right next to the desk of someone who often seems to feel as though it is too hot in the office. The problem as I see it is, while one person is perhaps too hot, the other (me) is too cold. I thought that, it was not fair for me to suffer because he wanted to be cooler, but I also realized that perhaps he suffers from it being too hot.

Over the days and weeks, while in the office at my desk, I would often wear a headscarf, even in the middle of summer. Sometimes, I would leave the office early, even though I wanted to stay longer. Has this been fair to me? Perhaps not, but this is only my perspective. In the past, I would have viewed this kind of situation as a personal attack on me. Then, from the point of believing that I was being attacked, I would have turned on a personality suit and devoted substantial mental resources to wage war in an office, lol.

Fortunately, I remembered my commitment to change me to live the word humble. Although, I am still am not certain what it means to live this word, I am certain of the commitments that I have made as part of my process of understanding and living this word, humble.

To sum up thousands of lines of mind-code that I have rewritten:
• I commit myself to consider other people’s perspectives.
• I commit myself to do and give unto them, as I would ask them to do and give unto me.
• Wherein, I find myself in disagreement with another, I commit to compromise in consideration of the situation, so to find common ground upon which we are all able to stand.

For the most part, this meant wearing a headscarf in the office and often leaving early, even when I wanted to stay late. The experience of being in an office with cold air blowing on my head was not fun; however, it has been revealing. Whereas in the past, I focused on getting my way, I now have an idea of how it feels to be on the receiving end of unpleasantness. When I look back as how I used to be in relation to others, I see that I was not always so kind. In many ways, I used to bully people. My attitude was often that of, I am doing it my way and if you do not like it, tough shit. Nowadays, I understand that, when working in an environment with people, I am not always going to have thing my way. Compromise sometimes means giving in on one point to focus on another point. In this case, the other point is that of focusing on a mission that I have given to myself. That mission has been proceeding at a reasonable pace. Additionally, it now looks as though I will soon have an opportunity to move to another desk. Did I design and create a solution to the problem? Probably not; however, I did walk through it without creating additional problems. I will count this as progress.

Point two:
There is a man that I called, friend. However, over the past couple of months, I have notice him on several occasions become vocally belligerent towards me and I guess towards others. In the past, I used to enjoy listening to people exercise their “rights” to be verbally abusive towards others. I guess I appreciated seeing people treat others impolitely. I guess it was as though I was viewing and justifying a covert part of me externalized in someone else. I guess what attracted me to this kind of person, was that he or she externalized their evil, while I kept mine in secret. I guess I accepted and allowed verbal abuse from others because I did not really give a shit about them, because even back then, I realized to an extent that, their words only applied to them.

Nowadays however, after walking a process for several years, I do care about others. For this, I pat myself on the back because it has not been easy to change me to understand and live the word, care. In short, caring is about doing in relation to others, as I would have them do in relation to me. A point that I have realized about abusive people is that, they will often continuing abusing as long as others allow them to abuse. In other words, the responsibility for stopping the abuse in this world belongs equally to all of us.  Therefore, a couple of weeks ago, I stopped communicating with this person even though I see him every day. Additionally, I commit initiating communication with him again and explaining to him what I will not accept and allow in terms of our relationship. I also commit to assist him (as he is able to hear) by explaining to him my perspective of where he is heading and how he is able to change direction. As of today, about three weeks gone by, we have once again begun to communicate. When and if the occasion arises, I commit to communicate more with him from the point of assisting both of us to be better.