About the currency of anger

Today is Friday, a beautiful, sunny Friday. After my morning routine, I went on a walk with Lucie, my lovely Greyhound. When I got shouted at by a stranger, my day got even better. that's when I realized that I want to start writing again. So here's my little story of the day.

"You and your mutt are standing in the middle of the side-walk, can't you see that?!" are usually not the words that will brighten up your day. While I was holding the poo-bag in my hand, I found myself staring at this stranger that decided to get rid of his frustration, right then and there. It took me a solid three seconds to process what was happening. He was standing in front of me, a man in a brown parker, maybe in his early 30s. I smiled. His light brown curly hair was moving in the wind, his eyes filled with absolute anger.

I never used to be good at fighting back in an unexpected situation like this. Usually, I don't know what to say, start to mumble something, or just escape the situation. And I would get so upset with myself for not being able to snap back. I would go home and think about it all day long, come up with "better" ways how to handle the situation, with ugly words that I should've said, nasty comments that would've been the "right" answer to a statement like this. The level of frustration that I would experience would be out of this world.

But not today.

So this man, let's call him Rob, was standing there, right in front of me and my confused dog. "Can't you see that you are in the way??" he shouted at me. I smiled and said: "I am really sorry."He looked at me, now he was the one who was confused. He started walking away, his body looked like he was about to explode, I could still feel his tension while he was passing me. Four steps further he decided to turn around and say something like "that's outrageous!!". If I can be honest with you, I can't even remember what exactly it was that he said. So I repeated myself and said "I am really sorry." but this time I didn't stop there. I continued: "I hope you are still going to have a good day!", with a smile on my face. Not in a teasing way but genuine. And he felt that. At this point, I thought he would completely lose it. He didn't know what to respond, turned his head around a few times, clearly looking for something else to say. But at the end of it all, Rob walked away with the same amount of anger that he had before he started shouting at me.

I looked at my dog, my dog looked at me. "Lucie, you're in the way, my girl", I said to her and we walked away. Instead of feeling bad about what happened, I was so proud of myself. Rob had a problem today, and looking at the sidewalk that was more than wide enough for the three of us, I doubt the problem started with Lucie and me. Walking away from the situation without feeling upset or angry, was the absolute highlight of my day so far. For the first time, I didn't take on any of the negativity, that a person was trying to hand over to me. I let Rob dump whatever words he had to say and still stayed in a positive mindset. It clearly didn't satisfy him though.

Sometimes people try to pass their anger onto us like a currency. If we take it on, we will most likely find ourselves shouting at someone else next, either at a stranger or even at someone we love. We will try and exchange hate for hate, desperately trying to heal the anger by creating more of it in someone else. Today I realized that it is ok to not be able to fight back because it means that you are breaking the chain at this very moment, which is quite awesome.

And Rob, if by a stupid coincidence you end up reading these words, all I've got left to say is one thing: I'm sorry that you couldn't pass it on. I really hope you stop trying. <3