When my co-worker pointed the gun at me, I was surprised at how small it looked. Then I got mad.
No, not mad. Downright, vein-bulgingly outraged that this rock-brained harpy was aiming a gun at me!
So I did what anyone would do when threatened with a firearm. I fisheyed her and then stomped over to tell her I hoped she enjoyed bars, because she'd be seeing a lot of them that night.
Even as I write this 20 years later, I still feel nettled. All I had done — several hours earlier, mind you — was inform her she was being unpleasant for mashing her cigarette out on the carpeted bench in the downtown walkway where we were eating. I may have used stronger language than I'm relating here, but still! I was just trying to get her to stop.
I've mellowed in the years since, and I've a better grasp of how the world works. Trying to shame someone into change is not an effective method of behavior modification, especially if the other person has no shame. My wife has been a strong calming influence on me as well — though I can still be a bit confrontational and have a hard time keeping my composure in the face of what I consider injustice, dishonesty or unrepentant ignorance. But I've an added incentive to improve now — my children.
Since my girls are paying more attention to how I act (and quickly pointing out contradictions between word and deed), I've been putting additional effort into moderating — but not extinguishing — my flames of righteous indignation. The pre-teen years may be my best chance to teach my girls how to bring about lasting change in the world, and I'm not going to do it by maintaining bad habits like being sardonic, and telling someone what an idiot they are, no matter how good it feels.
So I'm shifting to a different approach. Since sarcasm is counterproductive, I'm working with my children to adopt, when possible, a more Rogerian "empathic listening" tactic. This way, instead of focusing on an adversarial, zero-sum approach, I try to find common ground between differing opinions, then show how the solution I'm proposing would benefit us both.
It isn't easy. I'm passionate about many things, and I want them to be equally — but constructively — passionate. And there are times when it's very hard to locate the middle ground, hidden as it often is beneath a disorienting fog of rabid extremism. We're burdened by a pitiful excuse for a free market lace of ideas, as well as a tendency for many public figures to offer up untrue, misleading and intentionally inflammatory statements intended only to arouse the unruly among their followers. But that's why it is imperative that I adjust, and that my children learn how to debate, question and affect profound change in a civil, polite manner.
They sure aren't going to learn it from reading or watching television.
It's all on me.
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