How our ego has the tendency to blow things up and why reigning it in is important!
Famished and in desperate need of a byte to eat after a long drive, I stopped at front of a food joint ‘Burger Bytes’. I was about to park in one of the 3 available vertical slots when when a car suddenly came in and did a parallel park, covering all 3 parking slots in front.
I blinked my lights and blew the horn multiple times to ask the driver to move the car a little ahead, but no use. Finally the person, must be around 25–26 yrs of age got down from the driver’s seat.
When I told him that please park your car a little ahead so that I can park, he mentioned that there was a car ahead. There was no car ahead. Then he proceeded to ignore and buy his bananas.
Mistake 1: I yelled a Oye, surprised at his utter lack of sensitivity – should have just waited for a couple of minutes more.
He wouldn’t buy bananas for ever — my wife quipped.
Mistake 2: Tried to reason with him that what he was doing was wrong and he should not park his vehicles like this and so on. Used the f word in saying “this is not how you park your f vehicle”. Could have really avoided that as well. After all a matter of minutes.
Mistake 3: I could have also chosen to park a little ahead initially, instead of expecting someone to change their parking for me. He was in a threatening mode of “do you know who I am” and “you won’t reach home safely”. Unfazed, I just told him to carry on and leave.
Meanwhile my wife got into this as well seeing the way he was speaking to me rashly. She was trying to reason with the lady in the car, who I presume was the driver’s mother.
They started shouting that this is public road and we can park anywhere and stuff. Illogical, but that’s how it is. When i realized i was being silly, i just zipped up and ignored. After a couple of rants, the other driver left.
The whole incident was unnecessary. Just pausing at that point before mistake 1 would have saved a lot of short-term heartache and a rising temper.
- I should not expect people to be sensitive towards us
- I should not make anything so trivial, a big deal
- Should just wait out somethings patiently
- Never get into a verbal spat and try to explain logic
- Will never let the ego in me rise again
- Should just smile off the stupidity shown by people
- Should consider my family and any possible threats to my family’s safety because of such incidents
True strength is in choosing the right battles and letting go of ones that really don’t matter!
In short, let anything related to ego, go.