Learning from irritating people...

By now, you know that I draw the theme of these articles from my life experiences, which I subject to intense scrutiny and which you, my long-suffering readers, are subjected to in these articles.  So I’ve been wondering about -- how do we learn?  

The other day my husband and I attended an event that ran longer than anticipated, so by the end of the event I was quite hungry.  In the very crowded car park, cars were feeding into one lane from about four different directions, and pedestrians were crossing in front of and alongside cars to get to their cars.  My polite husband allowed several cars to go ahead of us.   Then he decided to wait and see in which direction a large group was going, before merging into the exit lane.  As we saw they weren’t going to cross in front of us, (from my low blood sugar perspective, or is this just an excuse?), he seemed to be taking an inordinately long time to join the exit queue. That’s when my patience ran out.        

Here’s the thing -- my husband seems to drive perpetually in the slow lane of life.  And while I’m not always rushing, I like to reach my destination while I still have life in me. In all the years we’ve known each other, our temperaments haven’t changed much.  What has this to do with learning, you ask?

This incident or variations of it have occurred many times in our marriage.  So, how do we know whether we are learning or if we are just repeating the same pattern mindlessly?  Later, as we discussed the incident, I acknowledged my responsibility for my reaction and expressed regret for it.  As I was apologizing, I was also wondering why does this scene keep replaying.  

If impatience is the culprit that trips up my equanimity, then reflection on my outburst is my reset button.  This is what I mean: by apologizing for being rude and by analyzing how and why things unfolded as they did -- these actions of acknowledging responsibility and of analyzing consequences -- automatically give rise to awareness.  And awareness is the first step to learning.

The greatest understanding that arose from this situation was that the people who irritate us (and we all play this role to someone) also provide an opportunity for us to learn about ourselves.  My husband’s patience reveals my own impatience.  This showed me that even though I’ve grown much, this is still a growth area for me. 

Both parties have the potential to learn from such incidents.  I wondered what he had learned from it?  He replied that circumstances demand we respond to them as they are unfolding rather than rigidly sticking to just one way of approaching all situations in life.

So how we learn is by: 

• becoming aware and acknowledging our role in an incident,
• examining our feelings and thoughts about it, 
• analyzing the roles of the people involved, 
• recognizing that each situation requires a fresh approach, and
• understanding that sometimes lessons are repeated. 

Even though, these sorts of incidents have occurred many times, the fact is that at each occurrence: the argument duration is shorter, the anger less heated, the words less harsh, the feelings less hurt, the calm less ruffled.  And…we aren’t always the last car in the queue!!