"Love is my gift to the world..."

One of the most difficult challenges in life is remember that how others treat you is a reflection on them, not you. How you conduct yourself when you encounter a difficult person is the reflection on you.  Reactions are choices you make. Defending yourself in the face of a supposed wrong is a natural reaction to conflict. Holding your ground and remembering who you are and what you're made of is not, at least not for the gen pop. 

I have a coworker, we'll call her Angel, she seems utterly unaffected by the chaos that shadows our daily work life.  She comes in, she does her job (very well, may I add.)  She is professional and gracious and all the minutiae, all of it, just rolls right off her.  So naturally I ask her, "how". Simple question, not a simple answer, or is it?  

So first she basically said "Let go and Let God". Well, for me, this is an overused, simplified answer to what feels like a complicated question.  So I asked more questions. How? When? What? Why? Her answer was that I had to figure most of it out myself. She gave suggestions of some passages that might assist in my search for... what? Integrity? Conflict resolution? I read them, but skeptically I kind of felt like, what does this have to do with being able to remain peaceful during a challenging time. 

So, much to the chagrin of my family and friends, I began to search out memes to post on Facebook, inspirational, life changing, rewarding, mind spinning words that tell you- oh hey, you can do this. They weren't hard to find. And truthfully, the majority of them were fluff.  I posted them anyway. Anything that stirred any emotion in me that wasn't negative or self-destructive or ego crushing. 

After a couple months of this, I finally drank the koolaid and I started to believe.  So I went back to the passages that Angel gave me and I reread them and, yeah, not only were they pertinent, but they made complete sense to me. I knew what I needed, why I needed it, how I needed it, and when. 

Changes are difficult to make. The older you get the harder they hard. Humans are inherently bred to avoid changes, to be scared of them.  Who isn't scared of the unknown? A better question is, Why aren't we scared of the stagnant?