The Horse's Ass

There's a young guy at my morning meeting who shares frequently about how no one else in the world drives as well as he does.  He's pretty funny most of the time but he can occasionally go off the deep end, yelling at people, following them down the highway, stupid stuff like that.  I give him a lot of shit about it.  He knows he's acting like an idiot - a dangerous idiot - but he still slips into this behavior from time to time.  Hopefully what happens is that he'll begin to behave this way more infrequently when he sees that he's the person being harmed.  I used to think that other drivers were doing things to me - Stevie Seaweed - specifically targeting me.  This is ridiculous of course - I am a faceless being in a vehicle impeding someone else's progress.  It took me a long time but I eventually got to the point where I don't really care about other drivers as long as I'm driving competently and they're not endangering me.  Because I've progressed to this high level of spiritual development I rub it in my buddy's face mercilessly.

So there's this man at my swim club who loudly presents his deranged political views in the locker room to anyone and everyone within earshot.  He's almost shouting.  I know his type, an inflexible ideologue who is only interested in telling you how it is.  You can agree with him or you can argue with him, secure in the knowledge that no amount of reason or wisdom will change his mind.  Normally I don't even allow him to catch my eye.  I really don't care what he thinks and I really don't care to argue with him.  I have enough trouble maintaining my serenity without getting into a political squabble with some horse's ass.

Yesterday he cornered me and went off on a passionate, weird riff about global warming.  I decided to engage - lightly, I thought.  I tossed off some platitude about trying to find a middle ground in most of the things that I do.

Good luck with THAT," he spat at me.

Man, if someone thinks that balance is a bad idea . . . that's not someone to talk to.  Nonetheless, we bickered for a couple of minutes before he slunk into the steam room, mumbling "good luck with that" over and over.

I have replayed this bicker in my mind over the last 24 hours.  Mind you, I don't give a whit about this guy and I knew that any conversation with him was going to end poorly, but I did it anyway.  I needed to be right.

There's a lesson for me in here somewhere.