When I first called him to tell him I was on the way to work on his refrigerator he informed me in no uncertain terms I was ahead of schedule. That he had an agreement with my office for a certain time frame, and that I was not to show up until then. The phone was slammed at the hang up.
I'm used to dealing with angry people. It's part of my job description to be a sounding board for the feeling ripped off among us. Yet even after dealing with angry people all my life, starting with my very own father who seemed angry all the time, impatient, demeaning, irritated and rude, I still get a knot in the pit of my stomach when I have to face hostility. When I have to deal with men who remind me of my Dad.
I've learned over time most people are not angry at me. Some people have been in the course of my life; in fact quite a few, in retrospect. But the average person I deal with as part of my job serving the general public just need someone to vomit their irritation upon.
A guy who goes around seething like a boiling cauldron beneath the surface is a ticking time bomb. The slightest thing will set him off into explosion. He wears his anger like a giant chip on his shoulder. You see him at the coffee shop fuming because the line is moving too slowly, then berates the cashier for slow service. He's in the fast lane weaving in and out of other drivers in a Type A-driven adrenaline rage to get ahead of everyone else.
And he's the quiet, plastic-smiled nice guy with the digging quip that feels like a put-down and probably is. The soft-spoken, dignified dude with an acid-laced tongue.
Eckhart Tolle teaches that anger and irritation in life are signposts that you are fighting the present moment. You are not accepting what is, but rather wishing things were different than what they are.
Your anger symptoms are not caused by the situation, or by other people. They arise from within you because your mind has judged that the present moment is unacceptable. That things should be different.
But there is no should be. There is only Now.
To deny what is happening in the moment with the longing that things should be different is only to create suffering for yourself. Things are not different. They are what they are. And when you suffer, you give expression to that suffering in the form of anger, irritation, depression, despair.
The mad man I met today, though well into mid-life, has not yet learned to live in the moment. He is missing out on whole chunks of his life because he is going around should-ing on everyone and everything.
But he taught me a valuable lesson. He taught me that I am learning to face such people, knot and all, with the inner peace that this is my reality this very moment. He is exactly who he is: wishing his personality were different would only create suffering for myself.
He's exactly what I need this point in time.
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