Love Slows Down: How to Keep Anger and Anxiety from Ruining Life's Relationships: How to Keep Anger and Anxiety from Ruining Life's Relationships by Joël Malm

Author:Joël Malm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salem Books
Published: 2020-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

PART IV Let It Go

13 Let It Go

Love keeps no record of wrongs.…

—1 Corinthians 13

When my wife and I lived in Peru, I came face-to-face with a cultural norm that nearly drove me to insanity. Just behind our apartment there was a dirt alley where men—and women—would come to urinate on the wall. The alley was hidden enough that they could get some privacy from the street, but it was right outside my window. People peed all over that alley. Sometimes they even peed on our door. The owners of the apartments in our area put up a sign threatening people who urinated there, but at any hour of the day or night, you could look out our window and see someone squatting or standing—sometimes while looking right at the sign.

I got obsessed with stopping this behavior. (By now, you know I have control issues.) So I would sit by the window on the second floor like a crotchety old man and yell at people as they were unzipping or squatting. If I caught them in time, they’d normally lower their heads and run on. But sometimes I yelled too late, and they were already mid-stream, and you know how that goes.

I wish I could tell you that I eventually learned to laugh this off. But I didn’t. I just kept yelling, thinking I could control and change an entire cultural norm. But it was a losing battle. In fact, I went back to that apartment in Peru last year, and the alley still smelled like urine. Ugh.

I still get irritated thinking about the injustice that went down in that alley. You’d think I would have let it go by now, but I haven’t. And that’s a real problem of mine. I have a really hard time letting some things go.

I’m guessing you do too.

I sincerely hope no one is peeing on your wall, but we all have experiences on a daily basis that irritate us. The off-handed comment your mother-in-law made. The flight booking mistake that cost you a ridiculous “service” fee. The people who bring twenty-seven items to the fifteen-items-only lane at the grocery store—and pay with a check—when you’re in a hurry. I’m annoyed by people who don’t use their blinkers. And don’t even get me started on my thoughts about people in the airport talking on speaker phone while standing in the middle a moving walkway. (Not cool!) We’ve all got little annoyances that we spend tons of energy trying to fight.

Deep inside us we have a sense of justice that says, “It’s just not right that ___________.” (You fill in the blank.)

It’s not right how that person shows total disregard for everyone else.

It’s not right that my car got hit in the parking lot, and the person drove off without leaving a note.

And those are just the little things. We’ve all got some big hurts and injustices from our past that we can add to the list. Some of us have major, life-altering events that left us wounded and angry.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.