Hot Tub Guy Et Al

There's a dude I see often at the pool.  He's not a bad guy -  he's socially awkward and he's totally self-absorbed which hardly makes him a freak in today's society.  He's one of those people I'd rather not run into; not because he's evil but because I find him quite boring.  Where I have to be careful is with his politics - which run counter to mine - and this is especially true if he's with Hot Tub Guy.  True believers can generate a lot of true beliefs when they're agreeing mightily with each other.   Anyway,  those two were talking loudly in the hot tub the other day where I was trying to decompress after my swim when - against my better instincts - I decided to chime in briefly.  I knew I should have stayed out of it.  They weren't talking to me.  They weren't asking for my opinion.  They didn't have a secret agenda to annoy me.  True, they could have turned down the volume a little bit as their discussion veered into some potentially inflammatory areas.  But, once again and as always, if I had kept inside my own hula hoop I wouldn't have taken some incoming fire from them.  Their comments weren't vicious by any means but they were pointed and the effect was pretty harsh.  I was offended.

I stewed about this during the day.  I didn't want to overreact but I wanted to make sure that I stood up for myself and that they didn't talk to me like that again.  I thought of all kinds of ways to do this.  I thought I might wear some fake ear buds and pretend I was on the phone.  I thought I might turn my back to them and peer into the distance.  Or maybe get out of the hot tub if they walked in.  I considered asking them politely to leave me alone.   Again, the idea is not to make a mountain out of a molehill while still getting to relax in the hot tub.  The books tell me that if I sit quietly with a problem that I'll intuitively understand how to react, that a solution will pop up after a while.  So . . . I'll go swimming a half hour earlier than I normally do!  Brilliant!  Revolutionary!  It's not exactly what I want to do but it's an easy, calm solution that won't hurt anyone and won't inconvenience me too much.

My God has a sense of humor.  My God likes to fuck with me.  As I sat down to meditate at the beach this morning, after the Keep It Complicated meeting, the non-Hot Tub Guy strolled up and basically apologized.  He apologized for the political tag he attached to me yesterday.  He did kind of blame Hot Tub Guy for sparking the confrontation - not without merit, I have to say - but he apologized.  He knew he had been unkind.  He also had a lot of questions about Alcoholics Anonymous, referencing his own past drinking and drug use, intimating he might like to meet me at a meeting one day.  As he walked away I was laughing to myself at how my God rewards me for trying my best to solve a problem by just taking the problem away.  Poof!  Problem?  What problem?

I heard a story long ago in sincity where a member shared that because of some bad blood he had with a next door neighbor he was told by his sponsor to pray for the guy for two weeks.  He did so, gritting his teeth at the start, but eventually coming to a peaceful place with his attitude to his neighbor.  He got up one morning near the end of the two weeks, walked outside to get the paper, and there was a For Sale sign in his neighbor's yard.

True story.  Most of it.  Some of it.