My attitude or your perception?

"I don't have an attitude problem, you have a perception problem." — Scott Adams

Whenever I ask – ask implies anything from a mere curiosity to an angry shout – my son why he is behaving in such a disgusting manner (according to me), he simply says “I am like that”. Which irritates me further and I end up either like a raving maniac or a resigned saint. And him observing me as if I’m the result of one his curious experiments!

I have not told him this, but he is exactly taking up from where I left. Means, that I don’t explain my behaviour to anybody. I read somewhere, “A long time ago I learned not to explain things to people. It misleads them into thinking they're [FONT=&quot]entitled [/FONT]to know everything I do."

When I think about it, all my inter-personal problems are because I expect a certain behaviour from someone and he/she doesn’t follow my script and, horror, don’t offer an explanation to it either! How will I tolerate it? I think the most frequent question people have asked me is “why?”. To be fair, how can I answer the question “why?”. Most of the times I just do it because… well, there is no reason. I just do it. period. Who will believe it if I said there is no reason for a particular behaviour?

Long time ago, when I was a spinster, I used to sit in office very late daily. I had such a heavy load of work and I enjoyed doing it. One day I just decided to go home early. Just a whim. I took an hour’s permission and came home. You should have seen the fuss my father made. He won’t believe I just decided to perch early. He said it must be either because I’m ill or something bad happened in office. He just wouldn’t give up. I gave up and allowed him to guess as he wanted. I picked up a book and opened the window and sat down to read J.

I guess, most of our productive hours are wasted by answering one question to various people “why?”. My sir used to tell us, never ask “why?”. Instead ask, “how, what, where, when” etc. Simply because ‘why’ will not get us any answers whereas others are easier to answer. I will never be able to explain why I am mad (according) to you, but I can tell how to behave like me .

It’s just that, God has given us something precious – a life and time to live it. The how part is left to us. All of us do things to make us happy and trying to make (according to us) those we love happy. Sometimes we behave in some way and sometimes differently. Everything we do, we do to make us happy – nobody can deny that. It is just accepting that others also do things to make them happy which brings peace to me. Like I read somewhere, “…a new tolerance, an acceptance of the myriad ways in which other people coped with the one life allotted them”.

In Emma, there is a line, “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other”. We simply cannot understand others. But we can accept them. Or ignore them. People do their best to be happy. So do I.

Now how I handled my son. Next morning I got up and didn’t get ready for office. I normally drop him in school and come to office. 8.15 is the school time. I did not get ready till 8.00. He asked me why I’m not getting ready to drop him in school. I simply told him “I’m like that”.

 

thanks syamala for your feedback.

i agree with you that most of us think that "me" is politically incorrect; whereas everything everybody does centres around "me". They ask what about people who does services to others. I would say, that is also about "me". They do that because they want to do that and it gives them happiness to serve others. I am not debating about doing good or doing bad, it's just that people do things that makes them happy