Some People, Small Doses

“We spend time with people according to how well we like them.”

There’s no use denying it, we all have them. That is people in our lives that we can only bear in small doses. This is most fundamentally because we too are flawed and the flaws of others reveal (through our chagrin) these personal sensitivities. A sandpaper ministry perhaps. So, if these people who rub us up the wrong way are there to stay within the context of our lives how will we deal with them positively and proactively? After all, it’s not their problem, it’s ours.

Firstly, however, it’s incumbent on us to look squarely and positively on the nature of life and the truth that awkward and frustrating stimuli are always going to be there. We can be frustrated by it or we can do something positive about it—it’s our choice. These annoyances won’t go away by themselves; they’ll plague us until we grapple with them and finally conquer them.

As we juggle with the challenge of overcoming irritating or vexatious people and circumstances, here’s a list of considerations:

è We take some sort of positive control over our lives. We decide positively who we’ll actively spend time with and who we won’t. We become disciplined. We don’t need to avoid people per se; we just don’t encourage interaction with them. (Avoiding people makes too obvious what we’d like to say but can’t.)

è We decide to sow into relationships with people who will grow us, especially in those areas we want or need to grow in. The more our lives are filled with positive people (however we define them) the less room there will be for the vexations; and importantly, the more positive balance in our interactions buoys us to counter for the negative.

è We decide not to spend time with people who’ve both hurt us and haven’t restored that necessary trust. Then there’s the people who don’t interest us or don’t offer us much. We have no reason to offer excuses here; we just don’t go there.

è If we simply cannot avoid certain people i.e. we work with them or they reside in our families, we need to rationalise a way to not only cope with them in our lives, but to also rise above the issues that plague us.

è If we really have to deal with some people who give us a great deal of annoyance we just have to be as wise as possible in limiting our exposure to them.

Dealing with this subject necessarily draws courage from us. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

© 2009 S. J. Wickham.