(Don't) Look Back In Anger

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"We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves."

- Romans 15:1

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.”
- Mel Brooks


People are selfish.

“How dare he cut me off!”
“They shot at us!”

Don’t take everything so personally!

Right?

…Ahem. Let me explain (no, there is too much, let me sum up…)

We all think that everything is personally directed at US!

It’s not about YOU!

… it’s about ME!

Irony! Because people are selfish, they aren’t intentionally being jerks to YOU, per se (oooh, French!)! They’re not TRYING to piss you off, in fact, they’re not even THINKING about you—they are selfish, they’re thinking about THEMSELVES!
They just HAPPEN to be pissing you off indirectly.
I say “they,” but I am just as guilty as the next guy… not that I care who he is, because I am selfish!

Last week I was training for the marathon—which I ran this past Friday in Tel Aviv (I finished! Yeah! And… avoided vomiting!). Whilst I ran on the sidewalks of Jerusalem I would get easily frustrated when some random person would walk in front of me. I was keeping my steady pace, training diligently, then some putz would just walk in front of me… as if he owned the place! He didn’t realize that I was the center of the universe and that he should be walking backwards, so he could see me coming from behind and get out of my way!
God! The nerve!
I was thinking this last week, just as I ran past Derekh Beyt Lekhem (Way of the Bread House). Then I turned onto Emek Refa’im (literally “Valley of the Ghosts”… spooky), and I was tuning out the traffic, listening to my iPod, then I randomly glanced behind me. There was a middle-aged fellow on his bicycle, riding about 3 mph (or 5 km/h, which is 16 yen/millisecond, or 800 CCs/wingspan of an Australian condor).
And he wasn’t pissed off, or bitter, or hinting for me to move my butt. He was just calmly riding his bike very slowly, patiently waiting for me to move.
I nodded apologetically (you know the move, when you run into oncoming traffic, “oops, my bad”). He smiled and shook his head, as if to say, “You’re mother’s a whore.” No, not really, he was saying, “Don’t worry about it.”
And that’s when it occurred to me—Everybody takes turns being the person in the way.
Everybody is a pain in somebody’s ass. So really, we shouldn’t be so mean and impatient—because it won’t be too long before you’re in someone else’s way.

“Lean on me, when you're not strong and I'll be your friend/
I'll help you carry on, for it won't be long 'til I'm gonna need somebody
to lean on”
- Bill Withers, “Lean on Me”


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