Be kind, it is said, Everyone you meet is fighting their own battles. I believe in this and I try to live it but some of us are fighting battles of our own making and they're only in our minds. The unsettling people we live and work with can make us crazy and bring homicidal urges to the surface - it's a good time to remember that we can have the same effect on others.
Everyone has their own personal comfort zone and certain things that are necessary to be effective. One of mine is space - I don't like it invaded or altered. My desk is my area and I don't welcome intruders no matter how helpful they may be trying to be - it makes me feel out of control and chaotic, feelings I fight against on a daily basis, probably to an unhealthy level. To be effective, I have to have things arranged and in order and constant. I compartmentalize, keeping what I need readily accessible and storing what I don't need in a separate place. Such things must not overlap or interfere with one another or I lose my grip and become scattered, random, haphazard
and unraveled. Not everyone shares my feelings - some of us are at our personal best amid litter and piles of paper, disorganization and clutter, untroubled by disorder or disarray, they see any flat surface as a horizontal filing cabinet. My dear friend Henry keeps his office this way and once out of sheer frustration and to make a point, we roped it off with yellow crime scene tape - he simply stepped over it.
I now work with someone who is loud, twangy, walks like Chester in "Gunsmoke" and sounds like Goofy but she is well meaning and basically sweet natured although a trifle dim. My patience with her is tested with every conversation we have, she wearies me with insignificant ramblings and sets my nerves on edge with interruptions and trivial chattering. I want to shake her and scream Can you not see I'm busy?, instead my voice becomes brittle and abrupt, ripe with impatience and frustration. I speak slowly to her as if to a child and I'm ashamed of my tone but too stressed to change it. Her battles are being fought on a different plane of reality and like a poorly hung picture, no matter how often it's straightened, it will stay off center until it's hung properly.
Be kind, it is said, everyone you meet is fighting their own battles.
Some of us are sadly unarmed.
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