Encountering Difficult People
One of my favorite authors, Bob Goff likes to say,
“Love difficult people. You’re one of them.”
In college, I have met the most amazing people. Every day, I am in awe of the kindness, drive, passion, and intelligence demonstrated to me by my peers. It makes me so proud to be part of the Trojan Family. In any beautiful, diverse family, though, there is bound to be an extended relative or two with which we don’t exactly vibe.
I am a fairly direct person, and relatively unafraid of confrontation when needed. Upon arriving to SC, though, all I hoped for was little-to-no drama and that I’d be able to avoid it altogether. Well, as a real shock to the system, I realized that college freshmen are just high school seniors, give or take 2 and a half months. Cue, Bowling for Soup, High School Never Ends. Kidding! But, college isn’t utopia. It’s awesome and it’s imperfect, like any great, real thing in life.
A mantra I hold close to my heart is, “focus on keeping your side of the street clean.” We all walk this life on our own unique timeline. The world outside of us transforms when our inner world changes. Life is an inside job.
A game-changer in how I deal with someone who is really just grinding my gears is something I used to pay lip-service to but fail to actually do: send that person love. I had the epiphany the other day that I could pray for anyone bothering me, or that I could improve my relationships with people, in part, completely on my own. For instance, if there’s someone in your life who really hurt you, but you don’t want to hold onto hatred towards them, practice saying, “I forgive you so-and-so, and I release you to the Holy Spirit (universe).” This chant doesn’t erase the pain you felt, or reverse the likelihood that your relationship is forever changed, but it relinquishes you from living attached to the wound. Letting go doesn’t mean that you never feel sadness or that you must suppress your memories and/or feelings; releasing someone, a problem, heartache, or uncertainty to God is meant to take the weight off of your chest so that when the time comes around to meet that person again or face that difficult situation, you can respond vs. react.
Praying for the people that piss us off helps us sift through what exactly is bothering us, and to offer that up to the universe to deal with. When we pray for the difficult to people, we practice loving them the way we’d hope to be loved. This act acknowledges that whatever we perceive to be “wrong” with isn’t our business, it’s God’s business. And, therefore, it’s not our to worry about or ruminate over. How freeing.
Like meditation, time in prayer slows us down, and the more we take the time to send love to the people around us, the more time we spend practicing responding divinely, rather than reacting humanly. My Dad always reminds me, “Don’t react while the plate is still hot. Let the plate cool, then you can decide how to respond.” This simple activity of reverting to love and grace through prayer is so much beneficial for our health than the more often chosen equivalent: gossip. Think of how gossiping about someone who is irking you makes you feel; gossip typically reinforces our assumptions and projections about said person, and it strengthens our confirmation bias that aforementioned someone is somehow purposefully upsetting us. Praying for them–sending them love–breeds feelings of forgiveness towards them.
This approach to dealing with difficult people–to loving difficult people–by no means that we should all be doormats who let anyone who comes by stomp on us. Loving the people who might otherwise make us want to choose fear or hate is an act of rebellion, and it actually is the most no-bullshit approach of all. In the wise words of Buddha,
“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
We can only overcome hatred with love. Disease with ease. The love we give always finds its way back to us, so I challenge you to add more love to your life by loving the difficult people in your life. Let them bring your closer to source: let them (figuratively) bring you to your knees more, edging you to prayer. Their problems are not yours to internalize, so let God deal with them. Let the hate fall off your heart, and let love pour in. The more we love difficult people, the more we love ourselves, both the parts of ourselves we see as easy to love and the ones that we find harder to, included.