My former yoga instructor is a very profound woman. She has a fantastic blog of her own called “in·spi·ra·tion” which I highly recommend. If you can get past the colorful language which I find hilarious but others might find offensive, and the crunchy granola-isms, you’ll discover that she imparts a great deal of wisdom.
One of the things she used to say in class (and I’m totally paraphrasing here, so forgive me, Alicia, if I don’t get it completely right) is that the people who get on your nerves, the ones who piss you off or even scare you are the very ones who are put in your path so you can learn something about yourself and see yourself more clearly. She says that you should actually seek these people out if you want enlightenment.
Once you get into the habit of seeing annoying people as opportunities rather than irritants, it really alters your worldview. Sometimes I even find myself inwardly amused rather than inwardly screaming. Sometimes.
One of the things that I find most annoying is when I’m not being taken seriously. That is exactly the way to make me see blood red, in case you ever feel the need. For example, the other day I wrote a blog about acupuncture and someone actually said that I wasn’t being cured by these treatments, I was in fact being ripped off. As if I weren’t there. As if I weren’t capable of noticing that when I went into the office I had a certain set of chronic symptoms, and when I left they were gone, never to return. As if I were some stupid, gullible, highly suggestible person who couldn’t possibly be trusted to make my own decisions about my health. As if I needed to be saved from myself and this guy was the one to do it.
So now it falls to me to ask myself exactly why this doofus rubbed me the wrong way. What am I supposed to be learning from him? Am I really that insecure? One of the things I’m most confident about in life is my own intelligence. Is it a throwback from my childhood? I definitely was not taken seriously back then. No doubt about it. But then most children aren’t. Maybe it triggers my post traumatic stress from my childhood abuse at the hands of my stepfather. I definitely don’t respond well when people in positions of authority do not have my best interests at heart. But this fool is in no way an authority figure over me. Was I just over tired? Perpetually.
Maybe he was just one more reminder that I need to, and in fact have every right to, define my boundaries. (A psychologist friend of mine once told me I needed to work on that.) I had been putting up with this particular person’s disdainful comments for a long time. Probably a lot longer than the average person would have. I was participating in my own victimization. I pride myself in entertaining opposing viewpoints, but it was getting to the point where I no longer enjoyed this blog. My blog.
There comes a time when one has to say enough is enough. There comes a time when saying “this far and no farther” is entirely appropriate. I arrived at that point, and I did what I had to do, which was to eject him from my personal corner of the blogosphere. I feel good about raising my drawbridge, so to speak, and leaving him on the far side of the moat.
Is this the same as saying “End of Discussion” as I wrote about earlier, and as he so artfully threw in my face as his parting shot? No. End of Discussion is a tool that weak minded people use to try to shut down and control the people in their lives whom they claim to care about. I don’t care about this person and never did. No. Closing this guy out was more akin to using bug spray on a poisonous spider. You can love nature without wanting to risk your life over it. I have every right to repel poison when it is directed at me.
So thank you, annoying person, for that lesson! Now, kindly get out and stay out.
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