nanewcomer2004's blog
23 January, 2009
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Before today I haven't felt myself "go red" in almost five years. Unfortunately, I impulsively reacted to my feelings of anger today. It came out of nowhere and I didn't really realize the severity of the situation until it was over. So here goes:
I ran into a bookstore today to quickly drop something off. When I came out 60 seconds later, a police officer was walking away from my car and about to write a parking ticket for the car two spots behind me. I thought, oh crap, I hope there was money in the meter! I look, and there's a parking ticket under my windshield wiper!
He said
"No, once it's written, there's nothing I can do about it. I tried to get your attention but you didn't...". He didn't finish his sentence, but his tone indicated that the last word was more likely going to be "listen" than it was going to be "hear me". He said "I tried to help you...I tried to tell you but you didn't..." droning out once again.Â
I said
"If I would have heard you, I obviously would have come back and fed the meter, I didn't even realize there was one." I then said something to the effect of "Oh well, you gotta fill your quota right? This is bullsh*t." (this was the first time my anger came out against my better judgement)Â
He said
"are you done venting now?"
I said
"Yeah, I am" and walked away.
I then went into a nearby coffee shop, and vented a bit to the owner. She asked me "Did you press the button?"
"What button?"
She said "The button on the meter that you can press if you're going to be 15 minutes or less. It gives you a free 15 minutes."
I said "Wow, I wish I didn't know that. That makes it much worse." I then had a nice brief conversation with her, bought a coffee, and left.
When I got back to the car I look at the button on the meter that said PRESS FOR FREE 15 MINUTES. This is the point at which my blood started pumping at a feverish pitch. I kept thinking "I tried to help you", PRESS FOR FREE 15 MINUTES, "I tried to help you", PRESS FOR FREE 15 MINUTES!!! My eyes darted around the street corners, looking for the officer.Â
I started driving away, and as I did - I saw the officer walking a few blocks down the road. I instantly devised a plot to pull into a deli parking lot ahead of him, appear to be walking in to get food, notice him by happenstance, and confront him with my new found knowledge.Â
I did exactly that, I faked walking toward the deli, I faked being surprised to notice him walking past, and I began "hey did you know about the button on the meter that gives you a free 15 minutes?"
I said
He then had a look upon his face that was a mix of being busted and thinking 'forget this', and he walked one way as I walked the other.Â
In this instance I don't believe that I was wrong in any of the words I said (besides cursing once). But when I let my emotions get the best of me to the point where I stay locked in a negative course despite my intuition - that is a problem. This was the first time in almost five years that I felt that way - locked in anger despite my intuition - and it scared me. I use to have a real problem with anger, and I obviously need to step up some aspect of my daily maintenance, because I am terrified of the prospect of regressing into the person I used to be.
Tags: anger
22 January, 2009
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"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." - Albert Einstein
So what do you think of his quote?
Previously mislabeling him as the consummate big-bang scientist, it has been surprising for me to see how many of Einstein's most famous quotes have heavy influences of spirituality in them. It is amazing to see that someone so intelligent was humble enough to realize his own mental limitations, and that there were things that required faith in a higher order.
"Embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature"....now that's one TALL higher order!! A friend and I were talking about this exact topic the other day. Basically, we (atleast her and I) are a paradox in the sense that sometimes we naturally feel this way and other times we just don't. It is not something we can think our way into feeling when it doesn't just occur naturally.
I guess that's part of being human; we will never always feel the way we want to feel or the way we think we should feel. But when you compare where we are to where we were, it is undeniable that we are in a better place if we've done the work that's required to change and grow. What's important is that, to the best of our ability, we live according to our higher order whether it be called soul, spirit, conscience, morals, values, virtues, intuition, or hooziewhatsis.
Tags: spirituality
spirituality