Old Yellow Pages ✓

14. garbage

22nd november, thursday, 2018

dear diary,

I went to the market today to do some shopping. I was stumbling around holding six huge bags of vegetables and chips and bread and eggs and milk and god-knows-what when I crashed into a guy. I didn't exactly crash. I kind of bumped into his arm and something that he was holding fell down.

He lost his cool and started shouting at me in front of everyone.

I considered my options:

• I could give him a tight slap and tell him to behave.
• I could shout back. Maybe even land a few punches. Or better yet, I could pick up a stone and kill him.
• I could stand and listen and walk away.

Had I been a few years younger, I would have gone for option 2. Or 1 at least. I used to love to pick fights. But I went for option 3.

I have come up with a 'garbage analogy'.

Suppose you hosted a party last night. You wake up with a hangover and look around. Your house is littered with food and plates and thermocol glasses.

It takes you 1 hour to clean up and finally you throw a huge bag full of last night's rubbish into the dustbin.

How does that feel — throwing the last bag?

You feel good.

You feel clean.

Now apply that same logic to humans. They have bad days. Something goes wrong. They accumulate negative feelings like a garbage bag. And at the last straw, they dump that bag on another person. That boy chose to dump it on me because he couldn't take it anymore. And I stood there and let him.

Now you might think me a coward. I didn't fight back. Of course I am a coward. I am naïve and weak.

No.

What I did, not everyone can do. It takes a lot of self-control. I am strong.

Some might think that this isn't about strength or weakness. It's about ego and self-respect.

When someone shouts at you, it hurts your ego and self-respect. Or so you think. But I didn't scream or shout or hit him. I didn't stoop so low. For me, my self-respect increased. I respect myself more after that. And ego? I don't care about ego.

I think someone can decrease your self-respect only when you let them.

So when he was done shouting I could have done two things:

• I could have let him ruin my mood and gone home and fought with my brother and thrown a tantrum.
• I could have not let him affect my mood. And that's what I did.

I apologized, pick up my bags and walked away. A while later he came to me and said sorry, and that he had had a bad day, and I said I understood. Because I did.

I think, if someone is having a bad day, I shouldn't make it worse.

I have changed a lot, you know. I was a very different person, but after meeting Kush, I have become someone else, and I love this change. I can feel myself moving towards love and peace, kindness and sympathy, and I like to think that I'm Awakening.

But I'll save writing about him for another day.

  ❄