One of my bad points is that I’m quick to temper.
I know myself very well and understand that the recipient of my ire is often not the main cause of it.
It’s a common phenomenon and one which , when you are in the centre of things , is very hard to see with clarity.
Yesterday I managed fairly well
Fairly
I finished three night shifts only to face just one day off before a long day shift, and when a colleague acted in a self absorbed, needy way I found my temper rising like lava from a volcano .
Luckily I walked away, muttering like Mutley from Dick Dastardly
Distance and very cold air whistling in from the North over the Goat free Orme, cleared my head with timely pleasure.
My colleague wasn’t the problem
Tiredness, four courses of nausea inducing antibiotics, a cold cottage without a workable fire and elevated blood infection markers were the problem.
I got that all straight in my head in the calming panacea of the wind and within the hour organised to take an annual leave day today, during which I slept 10 hours overnight, only being woken by a wide eyed bulldog pushing slowly down on my windpipe.
An unthinking slight from a loved one was taken too personally yesterday resulting in a sharp email which wasn’t worthy of me.
Another upset I managed to mull about during a warm bath and the temper subsided instantly like the bath bomb I treated myself too from the kind goody bag the hospice nurses received last year from a now defunct Debenhams
When I was mentoring and teaching new Samaritans and nurses I often explored just why people became irritated or angry with you and themselves
It was always a knotty and complicated discussion.
I follow a Buddhist monk on tiktok
I understand that this sounds a little flaky and indulgent
It isn’t.
This elderly Australian speaks more sense in 30 seconds than most can share in 30 months .
Pragmatic and calm and sincere
Her calm voice is true mindfulness in days that can be filled by slights and upsets and tiredness and sickness.
Like everyone, I’m a work in process.
Sometimes I can be good at recognising where my “temper” leaches from
Other times the camouflage is just too thick.
But let us remember……
It’s never just one thing…….
from Going Gently https://ift.tt/3FUF1H6
