So much for all my time management. I was running late, I had a bus to catch at 12.30 and the only way I was going to make it was to put my head down and run like the blazes. So there I was, my long lanky legs trying to move faster than they had moved in a long time. As I approached the bus stop, my chest felt like it was being soundly beaten with a rather large mallet.
The bus pulled up, the doors opened and I hopped onto the bus to be met by a very sullen bus driver.
"Phew",I sighed, "I just made it and no more!"
Silence.
"That was a tough run.", I continued.
More silence.
"How much is a single journey to the village of Killyleagh?"
A rather annoyed glare from the bus driver as he reached down for his list of fares.
"Three pounds fifty." he grumbled back at me.
I handed him the money and headed into the bus to find a seat. Who did he think he was? I should have said something to him! I should have complained about his attitude. How dare he treat me like that! These were all the thoughts that were running, hot tempered through my head.
I eventually found a free seat beside a smiling elderly woman. She greeted me with a warm "Hello sonny". I calmed down a little. I then told her about the attitude of the bus driver. I told her about how it had gotten my blood boiling. She looked at me calmly, rested her hand on my arm and with a warm compassionate smile said
"We all have bad days. Let him have his."
This one sentence totally changed the way I was feeling. We are all only human. We all indeed have our bad days. If someone is rude to you, or has a bad attitude towards you, remember it most likely has nothing to do with you. Do not take it personally. They might be having their bad day. Do not let it get to you. Learn to shrug your shoulders and let them have their bad day. You will be a much happier and calmer person.
Good Luck,
Allen
4 comments:
Is that a true story - or did you make it up?
Just to let you know we are trying to do something about this -
http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/04/24/45601/ulster-bus-drivers-to-undergo-customer-service-training.html
The start of freedom and the realization that you aren’t “the one who thinks”.
The moment when you start observing who thinks, an higher level of consciousness is active.
You account to yourself for being of a huge realm of an intelligence that goes beyond the thought and it is only the smallest aspect of that intelligence.
You understand the that all the things really important, as beauty, love, creativity, happiness, interior peace, are born outside the mind.
ECKHART TOLLE
I always thought the outer world is only a mirror of what we are inside, but now I feel the desire to explore the infinite inside us.
We are sometimes afraid of looking inside us, because we identify ourselves with the outer world, we feel that information, emotions overwhelm us, but it’s only a small test to overcome and to find our inner treasure and to start a fantastic adventure.
The fear is born because we derive our identity from the world. This is the realm of ego that needs to be always reassured and some appreciations. If we identify ourselves with the outer world the trust of us comes from what the others says about us. So we spend our life at the mercy of the wages between moments of glory and depression. Understand that the outer world is only a ripple of the ocean makes feel us fundamental.
We sometimes need dramatic events in the life to go beyond the appearances. The truth, at levels deeper and deeper, is always and only inside us and in no other where.
The western society is based on the fundamental mistake “cogito ergo sum” according to the man is sure to be cause he’s a subject who has doubt, so he thinks.
Now we analyze the thought. It is formed by everything have been taught us, by the environment where we live, by the hopes that we have, so by our past, by our believes.
The thought let us repeat the way of minimal resistance and live in a comfortable zone, maybe with different characters and backgrounds. In other case it push us in a future where we can foresee what will happen. Seldom we are relaxing in the deep ocean of today, but it’s here and now where we can find really us, beyond the reason.
To reach again the consciousness of the Be and live in this situation of instinctive realization of union is the flash of inspiration.
Inspiration means find our true nature beyond the name and the form.
The inability to perceive this state of connection from the origin to the illusion of separation from ourselves and from the world around us.
We think of us as isolated fragments and the interior and exterior struggles become an habit.
Nowadays our problem is not to succeed in giving up think of, we bear compulsive thought but we don’t understand because according to us it’s normal.
This endless noise doesn’t let us live in our interior calm and it creates a wall, realized by the reason, made of concepts, labels, images, words and judgments, that stops every relationship.
This wall of mind creates the illusion of “you” and “other” totally separated, forgetting our intimate union with everything exist, that overcomes physical appearances. […
I agree with the elderly woman. However i think that as a policy it's best to not get offended by strangers or people at all. Of course it's not always possible but by understanding that most people are grumpy because of their own issues it saves a lot of negative feelings.
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