You're porcelain, appearing made of stone...

Today I was THAT person. That one that forgets there are others coming from other directions and moves backwards with my shopping cart without looking first. I usually have a good sense about the presence of others around me even if I can't see them... I feel them there.  Maybe this comes with being use to having a large family and having so many people around me all the time…? More than that, without directly trying, I often know what's around me because my peripheral vision is insanely good. Well, today Jose and I were in Target, and we decided to backtrack to another aisle. I forgot myself and inadvertently started to back up and almost immediately stopped abruptly, feeling someone coming around my right side. Before I could even turn my head to see who I was about to collide with, I could tell she was mad... I felt her anger. As I was turning, I immediately apologized. Usually when something like this happens, people tell each other, "Oh don't worry. It's ok. I'm sorry too.”… these are all the things I say when the roles are reversed even when I know the other person was in the wrong. In the scope of things, this stuff just doesn't matter enough to get upset about... this is coming from someone who has had entire drinks spilled down my shirt at events before they even began and had to sit in my wet clothes for many hours and then fell over myself to console the other person, who I knew felt terribly, to make sure they didn't feel any worse than they already did. "Accidents happen because they're not on purpose" as Jose always says. And sometimes people need our grace instead of our anger even when we feel it and even when we are the one wronged or inconvenienced in some way. 


Well, today in Target, instead of finding an emotionally disarmed person accepting my apology, I felt her tension before I saw her, and, without even being capable of making eye contact with me, I saw her completely stop, purse her lips and grit her teeth, stare straight ahead of her, and seemingly trying not to explode at me while clearly wanting me to just move out of her way. I saw a woman seething, near her breaking point, hanging by a thread. And without thinking, I reached my hand out to her arm and apologized again, and I heard my voice sound concerned about her. And I was. It did occur to me later that touching her probably wasn't the smartest thing I could have done, but I hadn't thought about it; I just did it reflexively. When she still wouldn't look at me and continued to stand there frozen, I backed away and kept watching her, hoping she would look at me. She didn't. Instead she started pushing her cart again and continued on, all of her tension following along like a fog surrounding her.  This entire situation lasted seconds. I am still thinking about her over 4 hours later.

I'm not sure what it is about her that made me feel empathy instead of annoyance at her overreaction or why she is still on my mind now. But I know that I have had moments where I was not out to be a jerk to anyone but found myself clinging to what little patience I had left, and I too needed someone's grace... someone to just let me slide this once and I'll go back to being a better human tomorrow. I know I have felt bad about it even as it was happening but was just unable to cope any better in that moment. That is a person who is stretched very thin, who is very tightly wound, someone who is carrying a very hard and heavy load. It is possibly someone who is just a jerk in life too, but I had this feeling about her that this was a fragile moment for her. Jose and I both stopped and waited for her to go as I apologized one more time. And I looked at him and said, "She's about to break." His expression told me he knew what I meant. Did I mention that I have not stopped thinking about her since?

Situations like this are the reason I feel that some misunderstandings happen and then even worse things as a consequence. I could have been mad at her because of how she acted. I could have said something sarcastic to her or told her to chill out, I could have made a scene. None of those things would have helped the situation. There's that saying that you can't control how other people behave, you can only control how you respond. There's also a saying that you don't know what other people are dealing with in their own lives. If today reminded me of anything it's that it's not so important how this lady behaved towards me today - I actually applaud her for holding her shit together when I could see she felt like blowing - it's more important that when we see someone struggling that we don't contribute to worsening that moment for them.

This is not about removing responsibility from people and their individual behavior.  Also, I will never advocate for being anyone’s door mat. This IS about the human connection, though, and channeling our best perceptive skills and noticing when someone is struggling, and it IS about leaving a person better than you found them... or at least trying.  I hope she is now sitting in a calm space decompressing a bit as I know I have needed to many times myself. 

I wonder if she is thinking about me too.

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