It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. - by Epictetus.
The quote above is 100% right. Furthermore, we should also know the background of each person, as I already wrote in my old post "In My Shoes".
Reaction is what value us most. People will mostly not taking care of what we have been through. But, people will likely take concern to our reaction to face every each matter in our life.
One example,
My boyfriend were traveling using train. One day, he get in to a train and take his seat just as written in his ticket. Not long, a small debate were happened just 2 or 3 rows before him. 2 old foreigners couldn't get sit in to their seats because of system's mistake. So, their seats already filled with other passengers, whom actually hand tickets with the exactly same seat numbers with those 2 foreigners. Neither of these couples were wrong. They both victimize by a stupid system. How the officer did then? 2 officers were there and also confused. They asked politely to the 2 foreigners to waited a while and went took care of the matter. For short, at the end, those 2 foreigners got other seats as replacement.
What interesting is not about how the solution was, but how those 2 old foreigners behaved. My BF called me at that debate moment and told me the whole story. He said, those 2 foreigners were so patient and very nice. They did have a debate, but very polite, and not even once showed their emotion of anger/upset. They asked for solution to the officer in a very good way. Simply they said because they knew system could face an error or two sometimes, and the officer also already did their job.
Another exampli gratia was when my sister about to went out from her college parking lot, 2 cars were accidentally crashed on each other. The witnesses said both cars weren't wrong, just a matter of time. One car was driven by an adult man for age 40, and the other was driven by a college student. The old men went out and seemed like already wanted to had this matter simply clear. But somehow, that college student (female) stepped out of the car and yelled at the adult man with such harsh words! She even pointed finger at him. The man still tried to calm himself for some time, and also her friends already tried to calm that college student. But somehow, I don't know it was her pride, her arrogancy or affraid to face the rality her car was crashed, that female college student keep doing that sworn words and pointed finger to the adult man.
Well, as an adult, being insulted like that in front of the whole students wasn't really a great choice. So, The man got upset too, and yelled once to made that student shut up, and said that because of her impoliteness, he is going to took this case to the College security and principal, and furthermore to the police. Then suddenly that harsh-mouth college student shocked and scared, she even cried and ask for apology. Well, what's done is done.
You know, those two examples aren't always end up like that. One who doing the protest politely, might get nothing as the solution or end up with only receiving "we are sincerely apologize ma'am". On the other hand, the one who doing the protest brutally could gain what they want. But in line with those two reactions, we could clearly know the side effect each would take. Who will get more "admirer" and who will get more "foes".
The life story on us already made us this way, made us the person who we are right now. But reaction, is something we can train on. By experience, by understanding, by love, by logic, and etc. Sometimes, people can judge us not just because what is the problem behind us, but how we deal with it. Obviously. And sometimes, the miserable life (according to ourselves) we had could be the cause of our wrong reaction.
Just imagine, if we were in a public area, then a waiter accidentally spill out a bit of soup in our shirt. It happens because of really an accident, the waiter was stumbled by a cable or something on the ground, so he accidentally spill a little amount of soup on our shirt.
It's fine we get angry. Anger is one natural emotion. But... how do we react on to that anger, and that condition will stamped us with the values.
Okay, so we have some options to react on this problem.
1. we can suddenly get up and shouting at the waiter with hars words such as "stupid" "idiot", etc
2. we can slap the table with such anger
3. we can very shocked (which the waiter does too), and then mumbling around nonstop of how bad the service is in that reastaurant
4. we can shocked, calm ourselves, then talk to the waiter with the right tone to get his responsibility right away
5. any other idea?
Well, as the waiter is definitely doing a wrong thing, so angry is our right. How do we get angry, that's the point we should have more concern on. Just imagine again, if at that moment, there are also your great boss having dinner, and looking at your reaction to that soup accident, well.. I guess you know how will I continue this writing.
Once again, the emotions are natural in our life. Then so it's our authority to choose to ourselves how to react.
