….and the world smiles with you!

I’ve had one of those bloody irritating days today. I left home super-early to go to see a client this morning and there was a pile-up on the motorway. (Again, second day in a row – what is it about this time of year? Do people lose their normal concentration because they’re thinking about parties and presents more than they are their driving?) So, instead of an hour in the client’s car park ‘polishing up’ my lines with my lap top, screamed into their car park with one minute to go before I had to be ‘on parade’. Pah! Luckily, the client is really nice and appreciative so that bit of my day went OK.

Later, I got to the office to find someone had been browsing the internet, found my pbase and had taken exception to something I'd written a few months back. It turned out I had made a mistake and my comment was factually incorrect. But the person who found it had cut and pasted my comments from my pbase into an unknown forum (without me knowing)and effectively invited unknown strangers to ridicule me without me knowing where or how. Goodness knows, I’m by no means perfect and I do make mistakes but I was really angry that I’d not had it quietly pointed out to me so I could correct it, instead I get told I am a ‘cretin’ for making the mistake. I think everyone should be allowed a chance to make a mistake once in a while, don't you? Ah well, I suppose that sort of thing is bound to happen from time to time but I must say it made me seethe.

Then my office phone rang. It was a colleague who shouted at me for ten minutes about something that was not done by me (really it wasn’t, it happened while I was on holiday) and then wouldn’t allow me to respond because she said she felt unwell and wanted to go home. GGGrrrrrrr.

So, my advent story for today is tolerance. I know that there are people who ‘shoot first then think later’ but my plea is take a big, deep breath and ask yourself whether the person you are about to pillory is probably just doing their best in a difficult situation or if they may have made a simple mistake. If that could be the case, why not cut them a bit of slack instead of launching into an attack?

Smile and the world smiles with you.