They say actions speak louder than words and perhaps they do. Someone defriended me on Facebook recently and I was surprised at my own stung reaction. I shouldn't have been stung, it was a childish gesture on the part of my defriender (did I just make up a new word?) and I certainly should be adult enough not to react to that gesture. But it hurt. Would that I was adult enough to shrug it off and declaim 'their loss'. It set me to thinking about my emotional responses to others particularly in situations that bring out my inner child (never that deep in me). I read a cognitive behaviour therapy book years ago that pointed out that within each of us there is a parent, an adult and a child and we must train ourselves to choose adult responses to things rather than the behaviour of an emotional impulsive child or that of an overcautious concerned parent. At least I think that's what it meant.
But when someone you care about slaps you in temper and takes back the skipping rope they loaned you I'd say 98% of us react with our inner child. Because that is what this was, a virtual slap and a stomp away with a bang of the door behind the offended. And how do you claw back from the position that this virtual slapping leaves you in? I suppose you go on playing your game because you have to, life marches on regardless of Man's petty squabbles. You may not be skipping anymore but there are other games, and ultimately all any one of us ever has is our personal dignity. The only person who can strip us of that is ourselves.
I won't do that. So. A little pout, a shake of the head and onto the next squabble!
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