As I boarded the plane a couple days ago, I couldn't help but notice a few things.
First, the perfectly coiffed man bun on our flight attendant and second, how much this irritated me.
I literally wanted to find a hatchet and liberate this poor soul from his feminizing cranial appendage.
I hate man buns.
Viscerally.
This got me thinking.
Why do I respond this way? It’s a hairstyle. Hairstyles don’t attack people.Last I checked, hairstyles are not involved in human trafficking or domestic tax policy. They have exactly zero effect on my life unless I let it. There is the crux of the matter. On a daily basis, more times than I even know, I rent emotional space in my head to things that are meaningless.
This is really crazy.
We only have so much emotional energy and to give any of it away to meaningless offenses is, well, crazy. I don’t know about you but I think most of us could do with a lot less crazy.
I then started to think about my own style choices and whether those could possibly be offensive to someone else. My guess is “Man Bun” has less affection for Harleys and tattoos than I do.
The obnoxiously loud pipes of my bike could not POSSIBLY be offensive.
Consider every time I ride under an overpass, I gun the engine (because it sounds cool, and sends a tingly surge through my masculine nether region).
That could not possibly offend anyone. Well only those with ears.
Yes, on closer inspection I have more than enough obnoxiousness to go around.According to May—a Nobel prize winning level.
Faced with the fact that I rent emotional space for stupid stuff that doesn’t matter and that I’m filled with enough of my own stupid…. what do I do?
Is there any way to grow through this?
How does one live a little more free of offense and a little more full of joy?
Why do we seek offense in the first place?
Does it give us a sense of power and control, because in my mind, I believe power and control will give me peace and joy.
The more I think about this, the more I realize that this pursuit always ends with a first class ticket to Grumpyville or Assholeopolis.
Of course on that trip, Man Bun is the one pouring the drinks.
What you focus on, you become.
I am obsessed with this concept.
It keeps cropping up in multiple places in my life.
I think God is trying to tell me something.
What am I focusing on?
Things that offend, or things that are positive and bring joy.
Think about this, if I focus on what offends me, I become an offense.
If I focus on my personal complaints, I become a complaint.
Focus on joy, become joy.
Focus on the negative and become negative.
I am embarrassed when I look back and see how profoundly negative I have been in the past.
How much less effective a leader I have been by finding fault rather than finding a way.
I think the way we focus on things is much like polarized sunglasses.
These work great for cutting glare but make it impossible to read digital screens.
Put the Maui Jim’s on and the digital screen just disappears. Poof.
We all have emotional polarizers that we wear. They cut down on the glare of life by giving us a sense of security but often they just blind us to the messages we really need to read.
We can’t see these messages and opportunities because they are literally invisible to us.
Remove the glasses and see a whole new world.
I have started an experiment, an experiment on focus and on depolarizing.
I decided that I am going to find something positive in at least one stranger everyday and compliment them.
For instance, we were out for dinner the other night and one of the servers had a really amazing tattoo sleeve.
I told him how much I liked it and he gave me a 2 minute primer on how his tattoo was inspired by his favorite artist, who the artist was and what made him great.
This was a very positive experience.
In the brief time I have been doing this, I have noticed how now I am unconsciously looking for the positive.
I am on a mission to seek and compliment instead of my usual seek and destroy.
I look forward to seeing how this will positively change my life.
I will keep you posted.
I know I have a lot of work to do.
However, don’t bring up the morons wearing N95 masks in public!
Right now, that’s a bridge too far.
I know I will be close to enlightenment when I can walk past Man Bun wearing an N95 and not even notice.
For now I will just bite my tongue.
Progress.
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