Many self-help gurus, writers, and online coaches have programs they have designed to help people set up the kind of life they want to live and become the people they want to be. Dr. Jordan Peterson has his Self Authoring program, named so because it encourages participants to view themselves as the authors of the story that is their life. James Clear discusses imagining your dream life and then working backwards from there to create an actionable path towards that dream. It is important to have goals and things to strive for in life, and to be content with the work and process it takes to accomplish those things. Good luck becoming Mr. Olympia if you don’t like lifting weights, or a great quarterback if you don’t feel particularly motivated to memorize a playbook or watch film. Process is vital to goal.

“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”

Seneca

Almost equally important to having a goal or destination is something you do not want or somewhere you do not want to go. An anti-goal or anti-destination. A heaven to aspire to and a hell to run away from. For decades my grandfather lived off of cigarettes and Mountain Dew while doing the strenuous work of a farmer before having a severe heart attack in his 40s. I’ve never touched a cigarette in my life and essentially quit drinking soda years ago. Dr. Peterson highlights this in his Self Authoring program. He prompts students to imagine how terribly their life could go on their current trajectory or if they gave into their lower selves. That is what this post will be about. Seeing faults in yourself, then trying to correct them. And having empathy for others for displaying those same faults. Forgiving them, as Jesus said on the cross, for they know not that they are doing wrong.

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil.” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1) People are frustrating. Working in any role that involves customer service at all will tell you that immediately. They don’t know what they want, they are unclear in communicating their wants, and they will often blame you for messing up something they didn’t ask for properly in the first place. Many people encountered in day to day life are just as irritating. Cutting you off in traffic, being loud, going too slow, trying to go too fast. Worst of all is when friends and loved ones exhibit traits or behaviors that frustrate you. These people are usually a good place to start the practice of examining what they do that upsets you and looking towards yourself first before being angry with them. A stranger being rude in line at a coffee shop is one thing, seeing your best friend do the same thing gives a much greater opportunity for reflection. It is much easier to practice empathy for someone you know.

Dealing with people who do things you consider “wrong” is a great opportunity to examine yourself and your own short-comings. Your friends show up late constantly? How often are you on time really? Even if you have perfect punctuality and your friends suck at getting anywhere at an agreed upon time, this is not an excuse to be righteously indignant. Anger is not the response. Honesty is. Have the conversation, voice your concerns, make a solution. Take it as an opportunity for a powerful solution to work on behaviors of which you yourself are not proud. Instead of just arguing with someone to stop doing a thing, make it a collaborative effort to fix a mutual issue together. And if they still can’t pull through- ditch ‘em or just deal with it. Playing a game of passive-aggressive chicken where neither party says or does anything about what is actually upsetting them will not get anyone anywhere they want to go. If someone is doing something that bothers you, let them know.

This is not to say that if you are being mistreated you always blame yourself. Or that you should never expect people to change. But I’m sure you’ve had a conversation with someone about a third party that’s been driving you insane with a specific thing they do. And rarely in the course of said conversations do either people stop to ask themselves what they could do differently to curb the behavior of this person. Or cut off the problem entirely. I’m certain you’ve thought of somebody right now that does a little thing that drives you bonkers. Have you ever directly asked them to stop? Have you ever examined your own behavior and noticed times when you do something similar? My rule is this: if somebody else is doing something to annoy me, but it is something I myself can be guilty of to any degree, I do not allow myself to stay angry with said person. Not before confronting and fixing the flaw in myself. And definitely not without talking to the person about what’s annoying me. Those without sin casting the first stone and whatnot.

This ultimately is not a how-to solution manual on ways to deal with these kind of interpersonal issues. I don’t know your life, the dynamics of the relationship between you and the problem person(s), or the context in which these transgressions take place. That kind of conversation is above my pay grade and requires licensure that I do not yet possess. I will say strangers can generally be given the benefit of the doubt. You never know what people are walking into a space with, emotionally or physically. The idiot that cuts you off might have a sick relative in the hospital, the slow walker a disability of some kind. And even if the stranger is just a prick who never uses their turn signal and tailgates on the highway, what are you going to do about it? In the 30 seconds you have to deal with this person, is it worth the energy to get angry? Are you going to swear a blood oath to exact revenge upon this person and ruin their life, stalking them to the ends of the Earth? Outside of something truly egregious, use them as an imperfect mirror to see how you might be guilty of the same things from time to time and move on.

“The best revenge is not to be like that.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.6

Here is a personal example. A close friend of mine never had a shortage of ideas. From his rental property renovations (where I live) to motorcycle overhauls to music festivals at his own house, there was always something that sparked him. Grandiose is putting it lightly. And definitely way too much to do at one time, even on an unlimited budget. Nothing technically impossible, but he was certainly a big dreamer. He used to frustrate me so much when he would just go from one idea to another to another when he already had a half dozen projects to work on in the present. Always a new scheme without finishing the first one. Big talk. Or so it felt. But I too have ideations of grandeur; although some of my aspirations are almost mundane. (I’d like to own a donkey someday. Not exactly paradigm shifting) I have a million ways plotted out to how I can achieve those goals and I constantly vacillate from one path to another, expounding on each, without ever making any concrete progress into any of them. To me thinking about how I might get “it” done felt like doing something. My friend was at least putting on Spackle while discussing the new idea he had for a loft in the upstairs. I just sat around and thought and talked. I had no room to be mad that he couldn’t seem to finish one thing before moving on to the next. But boy would I allow myself to get mad. Yet I was guilty of worse. If faith without works is dead, then what was I doing with my life? And when he did something that bothered me, what did I do? Sulk, generally. Complain to myself. It wasn’t until far too late that I finally got the gumption to actually do something about any one of the issues I had: simply ask him about it. And believe it or not, it worked. He was my friend. And he was a great friend. But if I didn’t ask him to do something, how was he supposed to know it was bothering me?

For the last few months he had made pretty significant progress on his rental. Consistent effort. And beautiful results. And then he dropped dead. He had years prior to this to get his poop in a group and get this house done. Hypothetically it could have been done by now. And the wild scheme he’d hatched to move the shed from the backyard could have been a reality. And all I can do in the aftermath of his passing is look to myself and what I can learn from him. What I saw in him that I want to change about myself. And the qualities he possessed that I would like to emulate. If it is true that a fool is always getting ready to live, I certainly have been quite a fool over the last half decade or so. Not to say my friend did not live- he lived many lifetimes in his all too short of a stay on Earth. But like anyone, myself especially, he certainly had things he would have liked to have done and probably could have done.

“The fool, with all his other faults, has this also—he is always getting ready to live.” 

Seneca by way of Epicurus

This is a little meandering I realize now. Truthfully I felt I needed to write something to honor my friend. I needed to write something to help process his passing. This post wasn’t originally an explicit response to his death. The idea of seeing faults in others but checking them against your own had been floating through my head for some time. Especially as I got more honest with him about things I felt he should be doing better, or doing at all. But just as I had worked up that courage, he was gone. So I’m left with reflecting on his example. My memories of him anyway.

The last memory I have of him is asking him (finally) to clean up after himself a little bit better after sanding near the kitchen. I was tired of having to wipe down my appliances every day after coming home. And by God, the stove top, instead of being a layer of dust, was wiped down. Funny how you can get something when you ask for it.

This isn’t meant to admonish my friend in any way. I loved him and miss him dearly. Next week will be about the ideas I discussed in the first paragraph, examples to follow, of which he exhibited several. But before making any meaningful progress in anything, be it relationships, finances, career, or education, self-reflection is critical. And removing bad habits is just as beneficial as starting a good one. My friend certainly had some habits that I want to avoid, and we shared some that I must quit. I look forward to implementing more of those that I admired.