In my everyday life, I’m fortunate I rarely come across assholes. I teach a class of foreigners who, whether I’m good at what I do or not, have some respect for me as the teacher. I also don’t have to work closely with other staff at work, and at most other times I keep to myself.
So I don’t relate to what Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius said here:
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own–not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.”
That’s not something I need to keep in mind so much, even though others do (like Tim Ferriss, who has it pinned to his fridge and reads it every morning).
Or at least I thought so, because today I realised when I do encounter interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will or selfishness, it rocks me. Where before I was on cruise control going 100 on the highway, all of sudden one thing some jerk says or one jerky thing that happens and I’m like on a tinny in the middle of the Pacific ocean.
Just goes to show that one, I know jack-all about myself, and two, sometimes what we think we don’t need is the thing we need the most.
