As I watch the bravery of those people who have demonstrated against the injustice that is the massacre in Gaza and are prepared to be arrested in order to showcase this, I am bound to think of what levels of empathy these people have.
I have a good friend, a crafter, who spent weeks in the camp at the notorious Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp demonstrating against having nuclear missiles sited there. I have spent much time in creative groups with her and admire what she is prepared to endure as a result of her empathy: she is vegan and in a group situation will rather not eat than eat anything that has animal products in them. She even refuses to wear leather shoes.
I haven’t the same resolve. These are heavy topics but at the level of a newsletter I would like to analyse our own proclivities.
My husband used to walk out of a room if I was eating celery, or an apple, as he couldn’t cope with the sound of my biting them! I have an acquaintance who eats with his mouth open so I am obliged to watch his food as it is masticated, and I have difficulty eating a meal at the same table as him as a result. I know of someone who is classically enraged because her husband squeezes the toothpaste in the middle of the tube and not from the base; I know someone else who is constantly irritated by her partner who sways when he is standing talking, and/or taps his feet when he is sitting chatting.
I am quite sure you can recount incidents of such minor irritations.
Then there are those irritations that make one angry. Mine is that my neighbours free range hens persistently come into my garden (we don’t have gates and fences to our homes in the country!) and scratch up the slate I have decorating the edges of my paths.
A friend of mine emails me regularly to complain about just how long she is kept waiting on the end of a phone line when she rings for information. Another friend, whose husband has just died, is now dealing with the bureaucracy associated with the death and is horrified by how time consuming and irrelevant it is (she discovered by chance that she could no longer drive her car as it was registered in his name!). These sorts of things will make many people feel angry.
I have another acquaintance who seems to thrive on being contrary. If any opinion is expressed in any sphere, without exception, she will counter it. This latter behaviour gives one pause for thought for if it is so easy for some people to need to be angry and it makes one realise how eruptions of anger, in so many situations, will so easily arise.
Rather than condemning the situations it is worth us all looking beyond them to understand how they come about. This long list of minor incidents may lead us to recognise irritations we all are subject to and thus give opportunities for us to change our responses.
Recognising our own propensity, to anger in particular, help us to cope with it. We can then choose how we respond, rationally, like the demonstrators against the Gaza situation have chosen to do. And with the minor irritations we may choose to be aware of them and be tolerant.
Last week I was in the waiting room of an alternative therapist. Into the room was brough a young woman, strapped into her wheelchair with no control of any parts of her body. As she glanced at me with no expression I observed, however, what a lovely looking face she had: she was a beautiful woman. Soon my therapist came into the waiting room to collect me, and as he walked in he noticed her and stopped. As she recognised him she started waving her arms around wildly and her face lit up with absolute delight: I have never seen such a transformation. He stood and chatted with (to) her before leaving the room.
I commented to him on her transformation. He said:
“Yes, we treat her regularly. We can’t do much as she has brain damage, but she loves coming here. And yes, it puts it all into perspective”