What do you do when you’re mad at someone you respect?
I bottle things up. Honestly, most of the time I’m pretty successful at keeping myself preoccupied until either objectivity or other priorities make it unnecessary to address the slight.
But sometimes I just can’t help myself, and I boil over. I will do everything in my power to keep the conversation civil and limited to whatever I was unhappy with, but as often as not the other side of the disagreement will try to deflect…which almost always turns into escalation.
And THEN we’re off to the races, friends. Some earth will be scorched. And we may or may not ever deal with the issue that started the fight.
I spent years in counseling learning how NOT to do this. Mrs. Teresi joined me and our communication has improved to the point we almost never argue…and when we do it’s brief and (usually) civil. Most importantly, we conclude with mutual respect. Our partnership is unharmed.
My mother, my kids, even my mother-in-law all fall into this category of “People Who Matter More Than Being Right” …but that’s about it. Because I’m a flawed human being. I just don’t have the temperament to insulate the wider world.
I’m flawed. I get mad even after a decade plus of counseling in the fine art of not being a perfect bastard.
I hope Peter did something fun with all those co-pays. You know…before he died.
None of this matters, of course. In slightly over a hundred years almost all of us will be forgotten, and those who are remembered will not be truly known…just mimicked and cherry-picked for wisdom that may or may not bear any resemblance to our actual feelings or beliefs.
Just ask our founding fathers! Men of the Enlightenment reduced to spokesmen for ideas they never knew and philosophies they never held. One party scolds from within the protections and privileges of the Union most conspicuously endowed with the ability to become “more perfect” in the hands of an educated citizenry, the other feeds the power-hungry with the wealth of a constituency that obsesses over stories they choose not to understand.
Or: Jesus, save me from your followers…but first, please smite the Woke, the Dishonest, and the Politicians.
Or: Make the Jefferson Bible required reading.
I finally got to take my turn on the ‘rona-go-‘round. It figures. I think I commented on not having yet had the virus and that was all the invitation Karma needed.
Paxlovid Mouth is a real thing. Get some good cough drops…once the drugs kick in you’ll want them to mask the taste. Kind of a metallic, blood & batteries flavor. I’d complain, but I’m grateful to have been able to get THE cocktail of the pandemic for the price of a phone call and a request to the wife to stop by the pharmacy.
I thought about posting some troll shit about getting Ivermectin at the hardware store or huffing bleach, but I don’t want to be the guy who gets someone killed. Maybe. Killing someone with sarcasm HAS to be some kind of achievement. It would definitely work as a storyline in a new WKRP-style workplace comedy.
“WKRP” by way of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” – THAT would hit closer to the truth of 21st Century regional media than anybody doing the job wants to admit.
The thing is, the guy who helped me find the tools not to completely flip out on people who make me angry is one of the few people who would have laughed with me through that train of thought…and he died of fucking COVID.
In his third act he set up shop as a LMFT. He took on folks with addiction issues, behavioral disorders, and honest-to-God mental illnesses…and he did an incredible job. He saved lives while appearing to not do much more than actively listen.
Now I have his copy of “Narcissistic Bathers” hanging in my office and an empty spot in my Rolodex when I can’t decide if I’m being unreasonable about how angry I’m getting about something that probably won’t matter by Monday, much less a hundred years from now.
I should be back at work Monday. I’m sure I’ll have something new to be angry about by then, although I’d rather not. More and more that seems like a poor use of our time, doesn’t it? Actually, both work and anger do. Although I’d be lying if I said I didn’t mostly enjoy the job.
If we can’t waste a little time amusing ourselves I’m not sure what good the rest of this is.