A dear friend from college, we’ll call her Candy, came for a few days to visit. Candy and I are extremely close, I love her like a sister, but sometimes we can fight like sisters too…when I look back at the visit I realize, I had prepared myself for a knockout prize fight from the moment she stepped out of the Uber and onto my front curb. You see Candy, despite having many redeeming qualities as a friend, can be pretty demanding and difficult. I felt like I was always trying to accommodate her and meet her needs but nothing I did was good enough… ultimately feelings would get hurt, harsh words exchanged and we would each return home frustrated and angry…

Candy was hungry after her flight, so I took her to my favorite neighborhood restaurant for a bite. The waiter came over to take our order, this was the scene:

Candy, “So I see you have a salad bar, but I’m not really that hungry and $14 seems expensive, can I pay you $7 and then eat only half of what I would normally eat?”

Waiter,” Um..that’s not really how it works, the salad bar is a fixed price no matter how much, or how little you eat. “

Candy: “Well then, I’ll just take an order of french fries, can I get those not fried?”

Waiter: “You mean plain potatoes?”

Candy: “No no, I like the crispness and the shape of french fries, I just don’t want all that oil and grease. Can you just cut up potatoes into strips and like bake them or something?”

At this point the waiter was looking at me with the most sad and pleading eyes, but all I could do was shrug my shoulders. In that moment I saw the truth…for years whenever Candy was difficult with me, I thought it was my fault, I thought it was an attack on me that required some rebuttal or defense, or that it was a reflection of how much she loved and valued me. When I saw her with the waiter I finally understood — this is just the type of person Candy is. Whether I am there or not, whether I am involved or not, whether I talk back or fight back or cower like a wounded animal,  this is how she acts. No way can I change Candy, and the truth is, none of this is about me, none of it has anything to do with me.  

We head from dinner to the bowling alley/ arcade where we were going to shoot a few rounds of pool.  While we were waiting for a table to open up, Candy walked over to the bowling section, picked-up a ball and was about to start bowling on an open lane when a staff member came over and explained she couldn’t just start to bowl, the lane had been reserved by a group that hadn’t yet arrived.

Candy: “its totally cool, I just want to bowl like 1 or 2 rounds…I’ll finish-up before the group arrives”

Staff Person: “That’s not how it works, we charge by the game. If you would like to go and put your name on the lane waiting list I can show you where to do that”

Candy: No no, don’t stress, it’ll just be a minute. Plus, how will I know if I want to bowl a whole game if I can’t try-out a few rounds. And the lane is open anyway”

Back and forth, back and forth, Candy and the staff member go … and I feel my blood starting to boil. Why can’t Candy just follow the rules? Why does she always act like this? Then, it hit me — how terrible were Candy’s actions really? Did they deserve the response of epic anger on my part? What if someone besides Candy was doing this, would I be so upset? If I saw it on TV, I might think it was funny. If it was a different friend, I might think it was bold. If it were a kid, I might think it was cute. If a random stranger did it I might be moderately annoyed, I might look at them all judgey, but I wouldn’t be filled with this kind of rage. But again, I still think this is about me, that it reflects on me (that the whole room is looking on and knows she is my friend, I brought her here, I ruined the fun and games), that it speaks to who I am as a person, what friends I choose to keep.

As I contemplated this my anger began to fade. I realized that it was my interpretation of my friend’s actions that were generating my negative emotions — my anger was entirely self created. Moreover, I saw that I already have so much narrative around who Candy is and how I should respond to her that I almost default to anger and annoyance whenever I see her, no matter what her actions are (seriously, she could be bottle feeding rescue kittens and I would  find some way to feel offended — just forcing those helpless kittens to eat her food). I saw how my pattern of  conditioned responses to Candy was keeping us in a cycle of fighting. So while Candy’s actions and personality weren’t on me, this anger, this cycle were, they were entirely my fault. After this incident, I began catching myself whenever I went into default anger mode. I began seeing the causes of my anger instead of just lashing-out.

This ended up being a critical story in my Dharma practice and my personal growth –I owe Candy a great deal of thanks. Here is where I started to learn to discern what stuff was on me to address and fix (i.e. my personality traits, my wrong views) and what was not about me at all, what was beyond my control (other people’s personality and views). Moreover, I saw it was all my imagination, my wrong perceptions that fueled my confusion, before this story,  I pretty much had it entirely backwards: I believed, Candy’s personality/actions were about me (and something I could fix), but my anger and my response, that was her fault –after all who wouldn’t get frustrated with Candy?

Warning: another blogger’s late addition prerogative is coming here —  When I think about my practice, what it has given me, I think about it a lot in terms of freedom. I want to be free, I think most of us do, but wrong views are actually a trap, a shackle.  Before with Candy, I was stuck in a cycle, she would do something, I would get angry, we would fight. Or I would do something, she would get angry and I would need to fight back. Either way..it was like a movie on a loop with no end..it was the complete opposite of freedom.  

Now, I have choices. Candy (or anyone else) can do something and I can respond, or not respond, as is appropriate to the situation –not just based on the same old script (which was fueled by my anger and hurt and wrong views). Moreover, by not making everything other people say and do about me, I can observe patterns in their actions and behaviors with greater clarity. I can actually fulfill my roles and responsibilities better,  prepare for when I interact with them more. I can make smarter real-life decisions, about what to say and do that are actually a response to others, not just to my beliefs about them, that are really my beliefs about me, projected outwardly onto them (you can look at hugs for the homeless in the first blog entry  for an example of this).  With these new options, finally come greater degrees of freedom.