Taking Offence
Taking Offence
Hello readers.
Today a topic that I have often circled around but never particularly cared to blog about. Do read on.
How do you feel when you’ve been offended? I don’t mean something like a bruised ego, where your pride might take a little bit of a hit and you feel aggrieved, with a bit of personal embarrassment thrown in. Pride, I have often felt, is a vice, especially when it is pride in self; ego.
Believe it or not, the author tries to be as anti-egotistical as he can. I am not always successful at this, and I have been called arrogant in my time, although I believe it was actually just mistaken identity, that it was actually my self confidence which was being labelled as arrogance (are they the same thing? I don’t really think so.)
But what happens when you are offended? When somebody lambasts a key belief or ideal you hold, or refers to your race or appearance in such a cruel manner that it provokes that fire in your belly, that it flares your nostrils and causes your eyes to transfix with such focus you feel your gaze could melt steel.
Or you might experience the other side of offence, where you feel crushed, heartbroken, vilified and unsure of yourself. You are left with emotional bruising, and find it difficult to be able to trust the person who has offended you ever again?
It’s not pleasant experience. Either way, you’re left feeling like you are about to commit a violent homicide, which, when that feeling surpasses, can leave you feeling ashamed for your rashness. Or you can be left with a feeling of depression and anxiety because something about you has been perceived as completely vile to another person and they have let you know it, in no uncertain terms.
Now, as being my style, this post wouldn’t be in this blog unless it was in response to some occurrence in my life. Well that is the truth. I was offended yesterday, and experienced feelings that exist somewhere in the middle-ground of wanting to inflict grievous bodily harm, and feeling aggrieved and saddened. It came about in a family conversation where my stepmother, perhaps thinking it a funny truth, but a truth nonetheless, stated categorically that she considered me a ‘mature sixteen year old.’
But let me set the scene for you. I live at home, with my father, and his partner, the lady in question. I live there because at present, I am in a state of financial reconstruction. It is not my idea to be living with them long term, but it suits me well right now because our house is close to town, where my social and professional lives exist, and it means I am able to live with relative ease until my financial situation improves. The whole idea was intended as a means for me to reduce stress.
I do not particularly enjoying the fact that I live at home, especially considering I had been living ‘out of home’ for the previous 14 months, and I do not believe, really, that at the age of 24 that you should be looking for mum and dad, or whoever, to help supply you with a roof to put over your head. But there we go.
Aside from this, I do not think there is a great deal of grounds for my level of maturity to be likened to that of a sixteen year old.
I have a career path, which while (as I have previously laid out) I do not particularly enjoy, but I do hold down my job well, and have maintained good interpersonal relationships with all my work colleagues since I have been with my current employer. I am also presently engaged in a career change which will hopefully, amongst other things, enable me to move out of my present living circumstances and travel around Australia. But I also look forward to life after this move is made. What do I do with life’s challenges, such as home ownership, wealth creation and sustenance and becoming a father?
I have a wide and varied group of friends, many of whom are substantially older than me, and with whom I can partake in wide-ranging, well considered conversations. Many of them live away from me, yet we are able to make our relationships work out long term because of give and take, something which I don’t think anybody with a decent level of maturity can ever achieve.
I also maintain a decent level of fitness, and have a role as a cycling coach for a local training squad.
When I look at this little snapshot of myself, as objectively as I can, it is difficult for me to observe an 24 year old with the maturity of a sixteen year old in this person above.
Of course, like all people, I am certainly not perfect. Far from it in fact.
I can be petulant, demanding, moody, I can be insular and introverted, and I swear about as a badly as a man whom considers himself something of a gentleman shouldn’t, and I even harbour a set of rather morally questionable ideals with regards to sexual relations, if you must know. In fact I believe I could probably, quite easily sit myself down and come up with a litany of personality failures that could engender me as immature, despite them being some things that I do not particularly like about myself and am perpetually committed to trying, sometimes in vain, to alter.
But I think my strengths show that I am not immature. I am kind, giving, loyal, conscientious, and hard working (when I am interested in the work at least) and I have a decent sense of humour.
But ask anybody what to describe the kind of person they think they are and I’m sure you’ll get a slightly imbalanced, with a view to the negative, list of virtues and vices about that person. But that doesn’t paint somebody as anything, a persons actions define who they are.
It is just that my actions and the life that I lead do not allow me to consider myself to be a 24 year old with the maturity of that of a 16 year old.
So do I not have a right to feel offended? Because I did at the time.
Some things that are considered offensive today, I feel, people need to have a certain amount of thick skin to bridge, because, lets face it, if you live in the western world in the year 2010, and are offended by people who swear, smoke, drink excessively or disagree with your political, religious or sexual persuasions, lets face it, you’re going to spend your life being offended. You’ll either turn into an angry, vitriolic individual with a chip on the shoulder the depth of the Mariana’s trench. Or you might end up a depressed, socially awkward and anxious individual who cannot interact with anybody because of your sensitivities (although these people tend to be rarer than the other kind.)
However, when somebody makes a remark, directed squarely at you, calling you immature, reckless, dumb, frivolous or whatever, whether you think they are correct or not, do you not have some sort of right to feel like a wrong has been committed against you? Especially if you passionately disagree with the person who issued it, and who has a considered opinion as to why this is so (as in my case)?
What is the best response? Should one respond at all? In my case, I merely shrugged, mumbled non-combatively and did my best to ignore it, which is my way of taking something on the chin. Should I have blown up? Gotten mad and called my stepmother out, demanding an apology (which, knowing what this woman is like, would never be forthcoming, for I suspect sorry is not a word in her vocabulary, nor apology a concept she understands.) Should I have thrown my plate of ravioli at her?
I suspect that a measured response is what is called for in this instance, but having said that, sometimes it does absolutely nothing to relieve the feelings of hurt that accompany being offended. A measured response involving diplomacy might clear up the air, definitely, but if the extraction of an apology is not expected, then why bother with a diplomatic response?
As fate would have it, however as I have penned this post, I was listening to an audiobook of Dale Carnegie’s famous people skills tome, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
In this book, Carnegie categorically states and quantifies with numerous examples, that criticism of a person is completely futile. By way of attempting to make the person improve by lambasting their character/mistake/choice of shoes with insult and ridicule, Carnegie states what this actually achieves is the opposite. The person feels it necessary to justify themselves, which often galvanises their resolve, to prove that they in fact, rightly or wrongly, that they have absolutely no need for change. I think the words in this blog are demonstrative of that phenomenon.
I have just spent almost two pages attempting to justify how I am in fact mature, and my attempts at justifying myself has in fact heightened my belief that I am a mature person, and also has lead to the further condemnation of my stepmother. Something which she probably would not appreciate. It has also caused me to want to put a great deal of distance between herself and my father because of this, something my father would be aggrieved to hear me say, but I am afraid it is a lesson he needs to learn.
It is a quantification of the basic message that one should never say something to another if it is likely to cause them hurt. If they have a failing, a rebuke of the failure will achieve nothing but angst and resentment and the brick wall of self-justification.
And consequently, that angst and resentment can only be countermanded by something of a rare commodity: Grace.
I would have listed graciousness as one of my virtues. But I think I may be more selective of it in this instance.
Good day readers.
