One evening this last week, while driving home, I was cut off by a truck. I was tired, I was in a hurry and I spent a good few minutes plotting how I was going to make the driver know what a jerk he'd been. And then I took a deep breath.
I have been trying very hard in the last few years to take a minute, before I react to something that makes me angry, to ask myself a question: in the whole scheme of my life, from the time I was a baby til the time I die, how important is this incident? Will it change my life? Will it affect my well-being or that of anyone else? If the answer is "no" - as it was in this particular incident - I have learned to let it go. For the most part. I'm no saint, and there are times I don't get around to taking that moment to ask the question before I let fly with an angry response.
The whole idea behind taking that moment is to let me decide how I want to spend my time and energy. Yes, the guy who cut me off was a jerk, but that's his problem, not mine. It would have been my problem if he'd caused an accident, but he didn't. He wasn't weaving in an out and endangering other people so he wasn't anyone else's problem either. He was just a jerk. Why waste my time even thinking about it? There are so many others things that are more worthy of my time, my energy and my emotional involvement that I'd rather invest in those.
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