Have you ever realized you hurt someone’s feelings…after you hurt them…and felt horrible?
Even if it was completely unintentional.
Maybe some kind of miscommunication. Maybe you interrupted someone when they were talking and you didn’t know they were about to tell a true confession. Maybe you didn’t attend a party and the host was mad. Maybe you didn’t call someone back and they were “waiting” for your call.
So that person reacts, then slaps you verbally or acts pissy or ignores you or makes sure you know you were outta line or did something they disapproved of.
Or maybe something extremely painful happened. You ran over a beloved pet, or a person, in your car. Something you did resulted in someone else’s pain.
I’m such a bad person.
It’s a sneaky little self-flagellating thought that doesn’t actually bring much freedom, love or kindness to you, or to other people either.
Let’s inquire.
Think about that thing you said, or did, or the way you acted that it turned out bugged someone….
It was a bright summer day. There were people on the sidewalks, crowding the entrance to the small parking lot for the well-known Puget Consumer Co-op, a health food grocery store in the urban Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. The locally famous statue of people waiting for the bus was about 200 feet away. People take pictures of that thing and decorate it with clothes and all kinds of costumes. Tourists had their cameras out.
I had been circling the block with my baby in the back seat for about 15 minutes, determined to go in there and buy organic groceries and bulk co-op nuts and all-natural pancake flour.
(I was a bit of a hyper-perfection-only-the-best-for-my-baby type mom, it was really annoying….this was twenty years ago!)
My son was asleep in his car seat, I was super tired. But determined.
This was about the fifth time driving the same route through the parking lot, back out to the crowded street, around an extra long block, coming back through an alley this time, re-entering the parking area once again.
Thank God! Someone’s red back-up tail lights! They were leaving!
I paused with gripping fingers on my steering wheel and zipped into the space the split second after the guy pulled away, my blinker clicking.
Relief!
I woke up my one year old son, carried him into the store, set him in the little child seat of the shopping cart and breathed a huge sigh of relief.
As I started down the very first aisle, a man taps me on the arm, looking at me intensely in the eyes. His face is angry, his mouth tight, furious.
“Excuse me. That was very, very discourteous of you,” he says under his breath, softly but with a biting, vicious tone.
I actually turn around and look behind me to see if he’s talking to someone else. No one there. I look back into his angry eyes.
“What?” I ask with my heart starting to beat, a shot of adrenaline racing through my torso.
“You stole my parking place.”
I blink. I’m trying to match his reaction with my actions. I have no words for a moment, he looks so frightening.
I mumble with fear…”oh, sorry, I was waiting a long time to park, I was circling……”
He marches away.
Ping. That’s the moment.
Who would you be without your story?
Who would you be without the belief that you did something wrong, you imposed on someone, or hurt them?
Without the thought that I was a bad person, should have noticed him, should have seen his car, should have paid attention, should have prevented this, should have been more courteous?
Hearing words, seeing a face, seeing a mouth that almost wants to spit, seeing fury.
Like watching a rain storm blow through. Letting the words and the face be the way they are.
Without the belief it is my fault, my body relaxes. The huge lump in my throat might come up and out, and I might have started to cry.
It’s hard to stay without the belief for some. To even imagine who you might be, or what you might be, or what that would feel like.
Be gentle with yourself, gentle with you, with those other angry people or disappointed people. Feel what it’s like to let it be the way it is.
I turn the thought around, the feeling around.
There is nothing wrong or right. There is no fault. It went the way it went. This isn’t personal. I am a human. He is a human. I shouldn’t be so mean to myself, I shouldn’t make this about me. This isn’t about him.
Could there even be something supportive about this moment, this experience?
Wow. Hard to begin. But then, something cracks.
I appreciate this experience of being hated, being dismissed, being misunderstood, because of how deeply it reminds me of my own disappointment, all the times I have misunderstood, the times I have hated others.
It appears that this is the way of it, the way life moves. Fear happens. I know what that’s like.
And now, here in this moment, I can relax and fall backwards behind that fear. I can use even this memory of “doing something wrong” as an opportunity to rest, to love.
I can send love to this situation.
Perhaps those people who dismiss me are reflections of how I feel about myself, of the way I have treated me. Who knows. But I haven’t treated myself very well. I have thought of myself as needy, desperate, without love, insignificant, stupid and powerless.
Someone who doesn’t pay attention well enough to who else is wanting a parking place.
Not exactly the sweetest eyes to look through.
“When you’re being what you are, when you’re living the awakened life, there’s nobody to forgive, because there’s no resentment held, no matter what.” ~ Adyashanti
That includes yourself, no matter what.
You can choose right now to see that you are love, you are loved, you are loving. Not as a little positive thinking message, but as something just as true or truer than your painful story.
Maybe that person bumped up against you and saw you as unloving, because you’re the one who can handle it….and turn it around.
Much love,
Grace