My local post office has a very small parking lot and when it's full, cars line up at the entrance to the driveway waiting turns. A few weeks ago, I was the first in line. Suddenly, the car in back of me swung round me and jumped into the lot. I couldn't believe it. I honked my horn and the man driving the other car gave me a dirty look. I just shook my head. It happened that two spaces quickly opened and both he and I parked. When I got out and without thinking I said, "How could you do that?" He was very angry. "You were blocking the entrance," he said, and I heard violence in his voice. "You knew very well that was the line," I said, and left him muttering behind me. I was surprised at how calm I was in this confrontation. I wasn't afraid. I dropped packages off in the lobby and he went inside and that was the last I saw of him. I drove away congratulating myself for my calmness - well, I thought, I've certainly come a long way to be so detached.
But this encounter has stayed with me in a form that is familiar. What I feel when I think of him is regret, the regret that I didn't think fast enough to say the devastating thing to him. For instance, "If you didn't realize that was the line, maybe you shouldn't be driving at all." Not exactly devastating, I can see, but nonetheless it's what goes through my head. Now, weeks later, that line is what's left of the experience. It comes to me at odd times when I'm driving; I find myself almost compulsively repeating the words I wish I'd said.
Even now, thinking about my saying those words, I feel a distinct tightening in my chest, something sharp and intense, vibrating. I recognize it - it's what I feel when I'm defending my ego. When I'm trying to get my own back, come out on top, cut the other person down to size. Hurts, disagreements, feeling discounted, anything I feel as a lack of acknowledgement and appreciation can set off this search for the perfect retort, and it stays with me, gets repeated long after whatever set it off has pretty much faded. There are many other examples of this happening to me over the years. An odd line from something well in the past will suddenly pop into my head and, as I repeat and rehash it, I feel the same body clench as if it happened yesterday.
As I I think about it now, I realize that the inciting incident, the perfect words I think of later - those are interchangeable. They're just the match that lights the flame of ego defense and every once in a while I need to light that flame. I'm a junkie for the feeling defensiveness and the desire for retaliation give me. Incidents change, words are different - but the feeling is the same. It's sharp and intense; it gets my motor running and makes me feel alive.
But I've learned a lot about what resentment and ego cost me and I'm certain I don't want to pay the price. So I've learned a bit about how to surrender, how to let go of the need to be right. I can practice how to cultivate compassion, to look for the humanity in whomever I face. But like almost everyone else, I'm still caught from time to time. Less than I was, but still...
Someone once said that writing is rewriting. It occurs to me that living is reliving. We want to go back and revise, to arrange and rearrange the past so it conforms to our ideas of ourselves, makes us the star of any incident, allows us to come out on top. Who knows - maybe if I say the words I wish I'd said to the man in the parking lot enough, I'll come to believe I did in fact say them. Revision of the past will become only the past and each time I remember those words, I'll feel good about myself for saying them. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.
Years ago, I was in my car driving somewhere that took me on the freeway. I turned onto the entrance ramp from the south and another car, which has been heading north, turned onto the ramp at the same time I did. It was an entrance near my house, I'd been through it countless times and I knew there were two lanes for a good distance before the road turned into a single lane.
A woman was driving the other car. It had a sun roof and she was illuminated by the light. She was well-dressed, her hair in a bun, wearing a light colored jacket that probably was part of a suit. She looked like she was going to work. But all that registered later because when I looked at her, I saw her face was completely distorted by rage. I realized instantly that she thought I was cutting her off. Within a few moments, she must have seen the two lanes; needless to say, when they turned into one I let her go first.
As I drove onto the freeway, I myself was jittery - it was disturbing to be the cause of so much anger. I lost her in traffic, but my internal camera had taken a snapshot of her enraged flushed face and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I could feel in my body what I think she felt - the heart suddenly racing, a sudden clench in her belly and chest, intense agitation. I wondered how many miles she had to go before she came down and could get on with the rest of her day.
All this happened a long time ago, but I've thought of her, seen her face, many times since. I thought I recognized what it takes for someone to get that angry over thinking a car was cutting in. I spun out a story of a woman stifled at home or at work, someone who isn't getting what she thinks she deserves. Or someone whose husband just said he wants a divorce or someone who can't abide any kind of slight - can't you see me here and that I'm first?- and my driving onto the ramp at the same time as she was the simply more than she could take. Or maybe she was a person who was angry all the time.
Even that day on the freeway, I knew I never wanted my face to look like like hers had; I never wanted my body to feel the adrenaline rush of anger. But I had felt anger many times. How could I know what my face looked like when I felt it? Felt something close to pure rage at the many areas in my life that weren't going my way? If I didn't want my face ever to look like that woman's, I had to find some way to bring anger down to a very small part of everything inside me.
When did I become the person who rarely takes offense? Who says, "you want to cut in, be my guest." Who says when a car passes me on the right, then gets into my lane and drives at a snail's pace, "Okay, I guess I'll look at the scenery." When did I become the person who knows that taking offense is to take a step into a power struggle - with other people in cars or on line in the supermarket where no one moves fast enough for me or in any of the many places I go through the day where people don't do what I want in the way that I want it at the pace that I think it should be. Demanding that the whole world run around me is no longer an option for me. I can't afford to get caught in any power struggles, to let my impatience get the better of me. I can't let my equanimity to be tied to what anyone else does or doesn't do.
None of this came easily. Everything in the world was an object of my ego and I was in a power struggle with it all. When you secretly fear that you're puny and unlovable, you need every scrap of power you can get. But that kind of power is as distorted as that woman's face and there will never be enough of it unless things inside change.
It's another kind of power I've searched for and found, a force whose only expression rests in a calmness of mind, an ability to see the human being standing in front of me, an ongoing desire to keep walking toward as much liberation as I can know. It's a power greater than myself and I know now I can trust it. I started out as someone who thought only the accumulation of power in the world would make me whole. Somewhere along the line I learned that the only power I will ever have is power over myself and my attitudes and that's the power that will set me free.
I got irritated today. When I got back to my hotel room, the key card didn't work. It meant I had to go back to the front desk. I had to drive there because there are many buildings in this hotel and it was too long a walk. The clerk gave me a new key and you may be able to guess what happened next. This key didn't work either. This time I tried calling the desk but for some reason I couldn't get through. So it was back into the car to the front desk. I was by now very irritated. The clerk gave me another key, I said I want someone to go with me because I'm not coming back again. He said he was calling the engineer since something was obviously wrong with the lock. When, I wanted to know in an irritated voice. As soon as he can walk over from wherever he is on the property. I drove back to my building, took the elevator up and went to my door. I looked at the time and said to myself, if he isn't here in twenty minutes, I'll -- what? My things were in the room so I couldn't storm off. Then, just as I looked up from the time, there was the engineer. The problem was the lock but his master key worked. I thanked him for coming so quickly, went inside and plopped on the bed.
I thought about irritation, mine in this particular case. I was tired but my real question was why did I want the clerk to know I was irritated? What was the point? He didn't do something to the lock and I could see the edge in my voice made him nervous. My ego wanted to show the irritation, to say I'm important! Drop everything right now and fix the lock! That would be counterproductive to say the least; I learned a long time ago that showing anger or irritation only makes A bad situation worse.
As I relaxed it came to me that the opposite of irritation and anger is humility. The way out for me from the driving back and forth and the frustration of the key cards not working was to acknowledge that these things happen, they happen to everyone and I'm not exempt. Daily life is full of obstacles and problems - if I don't take them personally I'll be helping them get resolved.
Three cheers for humility, for recognizing that I'm not the center of the universe!
