Have you ever been a passenger in a car and had an argument with the driver over something as simple as the directions to get to a destination you both were heading to? If so, was it because the driver was unwilling to listen to your guidance, even though you knew exactly how to get to where you were going?
This has happened to me more times than I can count. In fact, it happened to me just recently with my partner not too long ago when we chose to dine out for dinner up in Ann Arbor, MI. When the two of us finally decided on the Macaroni Grill, I asked if he knew how to get there. After responding with a firm yes, I watched as he began to drive totally away from the direction we needed to be going in. I immediately yelled and said he was going the wrong way, at which point he began to yell back and said he knew what he was doing. As we merged back onto the highway, both of us raising our voices at each other vying for control, I pointed to the location of the restaurant, which was now in the total opposite direction from which we were heading. My partner then apologized and said he was wrong, causing my ego to swell, but not without a price, which was a total lack of peace being felt from within.
All that yelling, control, and ego did nothing more for me than cause my body to tense up and take me out of my heart and leave me in my head. And to be honest, that’s the precise place I don’t want to be because when I am, I find I’m the farthest I can be from being an unconditionally loving and compassionate person in life.
There truly was a completely different way I could have handled this simple driving mistake. I could have just let it go. I didn’t though and instead I drew the verbal guns and prepared for battle just to prove I was right. And as you can see that didn’t end up so well for me in the end. Even worse, our dinner was only filled with a sense of awkwardness, tension, and irritability afterwards. That was a pretty steep price to pay just to be right wasn’t it?
I’m realizing through situations like this that sometimes it really is best to just let things go and let the person figure their mistakes out on their own. Often they will come back anyway and apologize for not listening, but when they do, it’s generally one that comes more from the heart and not from the head. But even better is the reality that the person who lets it go usually ends up feeling a whole lot better about themselves and keeps a sense of peace through it all.
So hopefully I will clearly remember to just let it go the next time a situation like this arises because I’d rather remain in my heart and keep that sense of peace through it all, instead of trying to win a battle where a victory is only going to pay a steep price within me in the end…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson