Egocentricity

Egocentric: Viewing everything in relation to oneself.

Yesterday I sat down with my most trusted advisers and agreed with their recommendation that the grass needed to be cut. I'm pretty conservative when it comes to grass-cutting, worrying that the time is Not Yet Right. I'm afraid that I may cause lasting damage to the world ecosystem if I cut the grass Before Its Time Is Due. I'm careful not to rush into anything. The council pointed out that mid-shin was indicative of excessive height.

I took out my trusty lawnmower and headed out to the front yard. I live on a busy street. An extremely busy street. When you are standing on the sidewalk it's hard to hear anything over the steady roar of cars, trucks, emergency equipment with sirens wailing, long convoys of motorcycles, WWII vintage aircraft, and the occasional submarine clanging along. I lowered myself painfully to mower level and primed the engine. I don't know what I was looking at when I did this. Probably nothing. I'm so busy thinking about myself most of the time that I'm not especially aware of my surroundings. Probably I was watching the traffic or some 15 year old jogging by in shorts.

When I started the mower I heard a shriek behind me. I turned around and saw a woman with a dog jogging in place. The woman was jogging in place, not the dog. I don't think dogs can jog. "Oops, sorry," I shouted over the roar of the mower. She moved past me, then turned around and started vigorously jabbing her index finger in my direction, with purpose. "You looked right at me!" she yelled. "You looked right at me!"



I didn't say anything, just kept cutting the grass. I'm in A.A. I'm used to dealing with insane people. Not long ago I would have cut the engine and screamed right back, using some colorful language. That made me feel bad so I tried to reason with these insane people, which never worked. That hurt my feelings so I started ignoring them. But still I couldn't stop internalizing the fear and guilt when someone was mad at me. I would carry it around all day. "Why did that person do that?" I'd think. "She wasn't being very reasonable."


Today I figure that I made a mistake -- and not a bad mistake at that -- and apologized immediately. Maybe that woman had all kinds of bad stuff going on. It's easier on me if I try to bend over backwards when I deal with difficult people. Life can be tough and most of us don't have a spiritual program and lots of friends to rely on.

It made me think about how egocentric I am with the world. I always think that people are doing things at me. I had to laugh at the woman's reaction. It was based around the presumption that I saw her, then deliberately tried to block her progress with a piece of operating machinery. Wow, talk about assuming the worst of a pretty benign situation. The facts were I wasn't thinking about her at all. I was thinking about myself which is, as I have pointed out, far and away my favorite topic.