Others!

Today, I am fed up! I have had the most terrible day at work - (not emotionally - but literally - with work). I have been working so hard recently and today, everything went wrong. Do you ever have those days where literally everything you touch seems to fall apart? I wont go into it all (as it would likely bore you), but suffice it to say that by 10:00am I was ready to go home! And I like my job! Ok - maybe I will explain it - I am in the flow now! It was really silly things that kept getting in the way of what I really needed to do, but that had to be done. Making one change - the tiniest change ever known to man, (I am prone to exaggeration!) resulted in some ridiculously massive - the most massive ever known to man, (see!) consequence, which then took up a big portion of the rest of the day. Alongside this I had to attend a team meeting, and have a man come and install something on my computer - who then promtly managed to delete all my printers. To top it off, my train was delayed on the way home, and a car crashed into the bus I was on just as I got off. (Don't worry - no biggy, just a small amount of damage to the bus and car, and no-one was hurt!)

Anyway - all this is beside the point! On the train, (that was delayed), on the way home I had to stand, (which is quite normal). A girl with a massive rucksack on her back came and stood quite close to me - but had her back turned to me, and so her rucksack kept hitting me in the face. (I am short - she was tallish!) This frustrated me a little - especially since the train was not really very busy - there was loads and loads of standing space. To be honest, I think she was just completely oblivious to the fact that she kept backing into me. It got me thinking about the things that wind me up that other people do. (I seriously had a bad day! I don't honestly do that often!) I decided to list them:

• Obliviousness - like the girl on the train, or people walking three in a row, really slowly, right in front of you when you are in a rush, or people in supermarkets when they leave their trolley in the middle of the asile so nobody can pass and then spend half an hour trying to decide which type of cheese to get!
• People that spit - I think it is a disgusting habbit.
• People that talk really loudly on the phone when they are on the train so that everyone can hear, 'how drunk they got last night', when all we really want to do is sleep or read!
• People who will stubbornly never see anyone elses perspective even when they cannot justify their own beliefs or behaviour, (although I am the worlds BIGGEST culprit!)
• Laziness.
• Disloyalty, broken promises.
• Rudeness, and a faliure to accept discipline or recognise authority.

After thinking about this, I began to look at the people round me on the train. (They may have thought I was a bit odd!) But I thought to myself - I am thinking about these people only in terms of what the do to annoy me. Each one of them is an actual person, with an actual life. It caused me to stop and think for a moment about the people I know, and the friends I have.

I realsied that I never ever notice any of these sorts of characteristics in my friends. Is that because they are not there? Well maybe, but in general it takes a lot for me to get wound up by people I actually have spent a decent amount of time with. Why? Not necessarily because they are 'better people', but more becasue I understand them that much better. I know that their intention is not to hurt me or to get on my nerves, because I know them and talk to them. This may seem a bit 'idealistic', and those that know me well will know that it is not that simple. I worry way way too much about what other people think of me. But today my perspective was from a new angle - not what do they think of me, but more, why do I think so highly of them?!

I do think highly of most people that I know well, if not all, and that is usually because I know them well, so I know they deserve my admiration. They are all wonderful people. Are the people on the train 'different' somehow? Probably not - I just don't know them. They are likely to be wonderful people too. Tomorrow, if the girl with the rucksack came to work for TFL, I would most likely make friends with her. So next time someones rucksack hits me in the face on the train, instead of being frustrated by it, I am going to try to think, 'who is this person - I wonder who they are on the inside'. Who knows - maybe one day I will be confident enough to actually ask them!

I realise that ROOTS is tomorrow, so it is not likely that many people will read this till Tuesday, but I find it funny that the theme for roots is 'others'. I wondered about waiting till I got back to blog it, but thought the momentum might have gone. Plus, it may well be enlightening! Who knows, maybe it will need a 'before' and 'after' blog!!!

To all those who have decided not to go to roots this year, I will be thinking of you, and am sad I will not see you there. I hope you enjoy your weekend wherever you are. To those who don't even know what roots is, don't worry, I am sure my blog will explain it sometime after we get back. I will most likely get tons of blogging material from it.