HE SAID, SHE SAID

(These thoughts are added to three times each week)

But did they? And in what context? And has the word structure been so changed in the telling that what was at first innocuous is now insulting. Someone tells you “ He said you are cheap.” What he really said was, “*(Your name) is thrifty.” Or “She said your dress is the ugliest dress he’d ever seen.” What she really said was “It certainly is different?”

The next time you are ready to get up in arms, upset and ready to do battle over what someone has told you someone else said about you; cool it. Rest assured , what you just heard probably bears little resemblance to what was actually said.

We’ve all played that game where perhaps a dozen people sat in a circle and the first person makes a statement to the second person who passes it on to the third…and so on…if you have played the game you know that by the time it has gone only half way around the circle the statement is beginning to bear little resemblance to what was originally said.

It isn’t that we human beings lie on purpose in relating someone else’s comment. It is that our memories are faulty and we have a tendency to enliven a quote too often in a negative direction.

Think positive. Decide that most likely whatever was said was said in jest or out of weariness is after all just an opinion and that same person may well have said some nice things about you as well.

In short, stop tenderizing your feelings while at the same time turning that chip on your shoulder into a log jam. I doubt there is a person alive who hasn’t had someone make a dumb statement about them that the person wishes they hadn’t said.. And remember, when you hold on to anger it is like holding on to a hot coal that just keeps burning and burning and burning some more. Throw it away. Douse it with forgiveness. Control it with an uncommon dose of extra understanding. Rise so far above it…it becomes no more than a speck on the horizon.

If you are determined to believe that someone really did mean to insult you and did a good job of it do not diminish your own being by growing angry at them. Pity them. Pray for them. Even make excuses for them. But if they were a fool for saying something mean you are the greater fool if you let it just keep eating up your insides.

I remember one man who really did say bad things about me and I would have preferred he didn’t. I took him on as a challenge and eventually he became a friend. I have had others say bad things about me and I still greet them with a pleasant “Hello.” Perhaps they still say bad things about me. Perhaps they don’t. But that is their problem. I don’t need to make it mine.

“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it” wrote Marcus Aurelius.