I have a dear friend here in SoCal that I have coffee with from time to time. While we both do a good job of keeping the conversations positive and understanding we will occasionally use the opportunity to talk about this or that person who is irritating the shit out of one of us. I have this rule about never saying anything about anybody that I wouldn't say with that person standing next to me but all of us need to clean out the pipes from time to time, and I use my sponsor and SuperK and a few trusted friends to air my self-justified grievances. There really are some irritating people out there or at least a few people that irritate me and it helps a lot to listen to myself making a self-righteous, intolerant speech about some person who fits in fine in the grand scheme of things.
Tom mentioned a woman that we both know and how much he dislikes her. She does have a grating personality which is exacerbated by a pretty obsessive-compulsive complex. There is, after all, a lot of mental illness in Alcoholics Anonymous. I commiserated and we moved on to other things. Sometime later I found out that he was driving down to her neighborhood and walking with her once a week. She is a particularly irritating walking partner because she stops every 50 yards to respond to each and every text and email and phone call she gets. Reminds me of my buddy in Cincinnati who always sat right next to a man who drove him to distraction. Me? I prefer to hang out and judge people silently.
There's a lot of truth to the adage of "pay attention to what I do and not to what I say." Talk is indeed cheap. And I know too many people who don't live particularly admirable lives but talk a sweet game.
"Love does not consist of gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction. Loving relationships are not made by taking prisoners. Love is not hypnotism or possessiveness. Love is simply a sharing between two people." Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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