A good friend from Romania is visiting London for the first time. As we were walking in Kensigton yesterday, I was really annoyed with a group of teenagers who were moving too slow and taking over the sidewalk. She, my friend, couldn’t understand why I was bothered and I tried to explain that I am not a calm person and my nervous system is quite sensitive to all sorts of stimuli. Plus it’s her holiday, not mine and I am really far from being relaxed.
When I told my mother about that and how I wished I was more even-tempered she asked me to stop being so hard on myself and always think my behaviour is inadequate. I admit, I always criticise myself and often make the mistake of judging things in terms of what’s right and wrong. But isn’t this what we are all told from an early age? That is good to be calm and bad to be irritated or stressed out. My mum also says that the reason why we tend to repeat experiences and behaviours that are’t healthy or have a pattern when it comes to people we deal with is- according to quantum physics laws- the result of our tendency to only see what we already know. We reject something different because we don’t know what it is.
And in the end, isn’t it all about this? Truly accepting rather than tolerating our differences- my friend not judging me because our tempers differ and me not being irritated by some teenagers who think the whole street is theirs. It’s sounds quite simple and really logical but somehow I find it so difficult to put it into practise. I never thought of myself as a person who is afraid of change because I packed my bags and moved to a foreign country when I was 19 and am never reticent when it comes to trying new food. Yet it seems I am not capable of meeting people on a neutral territory where I can stop seeing everything through my own eyes and make the effort to empathise with them. But then again, I’m not alone in this.
Maybe if we could stop being one way or another and just be instead, the world woud become a nicer place and people would enjoy more happy moments. I am not even near doing what I preach but I believe in our ability to always question and try to understand why we act in a certain way in order to learn and grow. My friend said to me that if now I’m so stressed in 10 years it’s going to be so much worse. And I joked telling her I would probably be on Valium by then. But I allow myself those 10 years to get better at physics.
October 7th, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Yes S, you’re not alone. I had the same issue when a friend of mine from Poland came to visit me. 3 days only but still couldn’t be less stressed-out
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