My father had a motto: "People are no damn good." He would say this with a twinkle in his eye and an impish grin on his face because he didn't totally believe it. But I think it was his way of anticipating disappointment. He knew that if we continually depend on other people for our happiness and well being, we will eventually get screwed because even our closest friends and family members will fail us sometimes. Reminding himself that "people are no damn good" was his way of preparing for those times when people would live down to his expectations of them.
I remember Dad's motto because in recent days I have been a sounding board for a number of friends who've suffered some significant disappointments. These were not simple things like losing a bet or not getting a job. Each one involved the person's hopes and dreams being dashed by someone who had not lived up to expectations. Through no fault of their own, my friends felt let down, frustrated, defeated, or demeaned. And they let disappointment, resentment, or anger eat at them.
Lord knows I am no psychologist, but I think it is a spiritual axiom that whenever I am disturbed, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with me. If someone offends me or makes me angry, I am in the wrong too.
When I first heard that concept I thought, "You're nuts! It's the other guy's fault. He made me feel this way." But upon reflection I came to realize that nobody can make me angry or upset unless I permit them to. My response to a situation is what matters, and the choice is mine. As Prince Hamlet says about Denmark, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." (Hamlet, Act II, scene 2.)
Another Psych 101 principle is that most anger comes from fear. I don't mean real "fight or flight" fear, but fear based on imagined threats. In my friends' situations the fear boiled down to a kind of separation anxiety. People whom they cared about had betrayed a trust or ended a relationship, and my friends were afraid of being emotionally alone. This phantom fear turned into anger, and thus they let a situation they had no control over gnaw away at their insides.
Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet, "Much of your pain is self-chosen." Proverbs says, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The Serenity Prayer asks for wisdom to distinguish between what we can change and what we can't. Self-help guru Stephen Covey distinguishes between the Circle of Influence and the Circle of Concern (respectively, the things we can control and those we can't).
However you express it, the point is that I have little or no control over what other people do or think. The irony is, however, that the better I am at dealing with what I can control (i.e., myself and my reactions to situations) the wider is my circle of influence and greater are the effects I can have on other people through my example.
If this little essay seems elementary (inane or banal), just consider it another exercise in dealing with disappointment. But if you find a grain of truth here, pass it along to the many of our fellow humans who frequently feel let down by others and who, therefore, are in a perpetual funk about things they can't control.
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P.S. The following is from Stephen R. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey writes, "Proactive people focus their efforts on their Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about: health, children, problems at work. Reactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern--things over which they have little or no control: the national debt, terrorism, the weather." To this latter circle I would add: other people.
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