Nothing makes such drudgery as a day spent around angry people. Work, for a variety of reasons, has turned into an emotional minefield of late, resulting in a variety of "friendly fire" incidents. I've been asked to intervene in a particular situation in which neither party will even consider the possibility that the other person might not be entirely at fault. I'm working with a father and son who aren't on speaking terms. My circle of friends is dealing with the emotional mushroom cloud that continues to fallout from a person with real passive/aggressive issues. My wife and I are taking a group of high school students on a retreat this weekend, which usually results in one good blowup between young people.
Will I sound too much like Stuart Smalley if I ask "Why can't we all just get along?" It's not that anyone seems to be enjoying all this warfare -- with the exception of Ms. Passive/aggressive -- but nobody wants to lay down their arms, either.
Maybe we'd all do a lot better if we heeded the words of author Frederick Buechner: "Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back -- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you..."
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