Why Be Insulted?

“Remember that what is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgment about them that they are insulting.” –Epictetus

A lot of time is undertaken in the attempts to avoid being slighted by those who wish to exalt themselves by placing all those around them in a shabby state. What can feel more humiliating than being the object of some person’s amusement? I can remember being 12 years old and not wanting my friends to know my mom bought the shirt I was wearing at K-Mart (is this store still open?). The sheer thought of what others might say and think frightened me half to death.  Will I loose by current friends? Will my girlfriend dump me?  Will my picture show up in the yearbook in a “that guy” status?  Oh … the depression, the anxiety, and the lack of peace felt throughout my body. Loss of sleep and the desire for eating gone—all because my Mom lacked middle-school self-awareness!  

(To my mother’s honor, she was working with what she had, and what she had for a provider was a Baptist preacher—my father.  Is this an insult? What to do?)

As it turned out, the word got out that my family shopped at K-Mart. While I did not loose my good friends, though they sure had a good laugh, my super-cute girlfriend of four days did break-up with me. She said something about it being about her. Right!  That “something” was she couldn’t stand the idea of dating a K-Mart boy. Yet, vindication was mine. For after being the object of Amanda’s mockery and malicious gossip (it turns out I also was a bad “hand-holder”), one night my mom decided to stop by K-Mart to buy who knows what, and guess who I ran into—Amanda buying some jeans. Oh the thrill, the laughter that spilled from my tiny month, all directed at that miserable blasphemer of venomous lies. Luckily, for Amanda and my sake, Nirvana’s “Teen Spirit” was released that winter, and the Goodwill shopping frenzy of the early 90’s made my dressing habits look elitist.

In retrospect, I wish I did not go to school the next day to spread the dirty little secret I had just acquired, for, while feeling good for a moment or two (retribution always does), this strategy for dealing with insults was not a guarantee of tranquility. No matter how much dirt I could dig up on my mockers, I would still be hurt by the scorn and rejection. Plus, the amount of time and energy it took to dig up really good dirt was becoming cumbersome. I simply didn’t have the stamina to keep track of everyone’s wrongs (that requires a lot of memory), nor did I want to compromise my integrity by conjuring up lies. I discovered that the worst possible reaction to someone insulting me was to choose to be insulted. Why give them the gratification of hurting me? Why should I give someone that power? I shouldn’t. Therefore, I had to come up with a different strategy.  I have discovered at least seven ways to not let others ruin my day.  

Due to length, I will not post this article in its entirety. Here are strategies one and two.  

Strategy one: Recognize the truth of the insult and change

After many years of research, it turns out I am filled with flaws of fantastic proportions. Shocking, I know! For so long I thought I was perfect, and every time some chump insulted or mocked me, it was because he/she simply lacked the degree of perfection I possessed. My sanctimonious temperament did provide a shield from the onslaught of jealous predators, but such an illusion came crashing down one fall evening when a very astute gentleman mocked my voracious pride. All at once, my façade was discovered. Someone saw me for who I was, and who I was wasn’t all that great. The insult worked. I changed by becoming only mildly prideful, yet aspired to be like the wise, who listens to life-giving rebukes (see Proverbs 15:31).  I came to realize many of the insults directed at me had some truth to them. Simply discarding the motives of the insulator, I started striving to see the truth and apply it to my life.

Strategy two: Consider if the insults even matters

I have always been a fairly rough guy. Manners are not traits naturally flowing from my inner being; rather, they are actions achieved by force.  This became apparent in my time spent in Cambridge, England. The Cambridge University was refined, the people were refined, the people’s dress was refined, and their language was refined. Knowing I could not match the British accent, I strove to match their eloquence in speech with proper syntax and ostentatious locutions. But, despite my parent’s best efforts, The Simpsons raised me, and I was unable to discard my lack of decorum and cheep words—like, “things and stuff.”

After many encounters with the British elite, I found myself the object of snooty ridicule—be it the music I like, my speech, sunglasses, dress, the way I sat, and even moved. Many told me that I needed to discard my irregular behavior and embrace “the higher way of life.” Now in such cases, I normally take the insults as I just described above, for it is important to make sure an unhealthy pride is not the reason for dismissing an insult. However, in these cases, I did not feel like I was doing anything morally wrong. So what if I did not use refined speech. So what if I did not walk or sit with grace. So what if my rather frank nature made a few constipated Brits uneasy. As far as I was concerned, it was good for them.

I came to realize, I didn’t want to be like the high-class Brits. While I didn’t fit in at cocktail parties at the University, my rough outer shell suited me quite nicely in the local pub. There I (and and another friend of mine) were known as the philosopher, and many local Englishmen bought me pints in exchange for philosophical discourse. Their opinion of me was nothing but panegyric, whereas the elite University members, upon seeing me enter the formal hall, acted as if an omen of failure had been spotted. At the local English pub was where I belonged. These were the people I enjoyed talking to—the ordinary. I am sorry; I’d rather listen to Bob Dylan than Bach. All and all, I simply didn’t consider the insults of the elite Brits to matter all that much. As far as I am concerned, only the opinions of the wise should be thought highly of, and I did not find wisdom in such advice. I will act as nicely as I can when invited to their events, for I see no reason to cause scandal, but I will not change my entire demeanor because a few people found my body language “unbecoming.”   

Look forward to further post on strategies three through seven.  

Good Sentiments Don't Insure Virtuoues Living

 "It is not good to have zeal without knowledge . . ." Proverbs 19:2

A boney and marble colored creature appeared on the porch causally creeping towards the spaghetti-stained tupperware filled with cream, as it had done every night this past week. Peeping stealthily through the weather worn window was a 40-year-old woman named Sue oohing and aahing over every soft stride the stray cat took. Desperately anticipating the kitty’s first lick of the cream, Sue had forgotten about the roast in the oven now beginning to fill the house with smoke. Sue promptly leaped into the air, as the fire alarm pierces its annoying sounds through the thin, wooden paneled walls, thereby frightening the cat to scurry into the night.

This was not the first time Sue had attempted to woo a stray. Just the other month she was finishing the stages of the courting process, when, regrettably, the stray was rather grimly grounded into the gravel road by a blue Chevy pickup. This ritual, on Sue’s part, consisted of nightly milk for a week, followed by thin slices of turkey for no more then three days, finalized with stretching out her hand in hopes of petting the cat’s grungy scalp for the rest of the week. If all went well, at the end of the ritual, she, in effect, adapted the kitten as her own. Despite the minor set backs of the now mutilated cat, Sue always knew another stray would soon come.

There is something redemptive about Sue’s desire to see the lonely and lost find a home. Her moral sensibilities simply couldn’t sit and watch as a weaker creature struggles to maintain existence. Sure, she did not care for all the creatures of the world, especially spiders; she wasn’t Francis of Assisi. But, as a child Sue unquestionably put her bothers and sisters to shame. They found great delight in watching the weak and the feeble suffer, as was demonstrated by their morbid achievements against defenseless creatures. As time past, her siblings grew out of such betrayals to God’s creatures, but they never developed a sympathetic inkling towards them either. They were simply content to be differentiated from Mother Nature and enjoy her periodically on a sunny afternoon, as many of us grow to do.

Not so for Sue. Unfortunately, her moral sensibilities towards the lonely and the lost slowly grew over time to also include sympathies for the seemingly weak and the feeble men she met throughout her life. Sue’s life had become a game of rotating chairs between one sad story of a man to the next. Her soft spot for the disadvantaged brought its own share of hardships into her life. Sue’s first husband seemed programmed for periodic episodes of ferocity; he verbally berated her often to only show up the next day with a paper sack of strawberries and flowers craving superficial intimacy.  Her second husband had a melancholy characteristic causing him to veil himself in his self-loathing for many hours in the city bar. On one abrupt day, his absence became permanent.  The current husband is physically present each day and never raises his voice, but spends the majority of his time spilling his emotions to other women on the Internet: ironically, on the same website he meet Sue on. Every one of these men entered Sue’s life after she found them in desperate situations. After one is gone, she would begin the ritual again with great rapidity.

After Sue opened the windows to clear the house of smoke and cut off the burn spots on the roast, she dimmed the lights once again and begins to peep out the window and strained her eyes in hopes of seeing the marble colored stray make the ascent up the porch to the cream.

The Sluggard

Based upon True events

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! Proverbs 6:6

It was a blistering, hot July day. No clouds insight. The dew from the morning had been imbibed with alacrity by my weed infested yard hours ago. The sun was now fixed in the height of the heavens when the chubby, middle age man appeared in my periphery dragging what looked to be an archaic lawnmower. I had been sitting on the porch most of the morning reading a theology book with a hot cup of coffee in my hand. Enjoying the shade from my roofed porch, I began to wonder who this man was. I had never seen him before, and why the audacity to mow that apartment building’s lawn on such a sweltering day?

The apartment in question was known for its trouble. Every day, it seemed, the cops or some emergency vehicle was attending to some crises. I knew the landlord. He was a crafty sort of fellow in the slummy sort of way. When I talked to him, I felt like I was always being told a lie. I often would feel like I need to go to confession afterwards, but I never knew quite why. 

Needless to say, the lawn of that apartment was rarely kept up. The grass (if that is what you call it) was always stretching at least four inches higher than the neighbors. Bud Light bottles glittered the lawn, and the occasional open dirty dipper would be seen on my walk to the bakery. During the winter months, the snow-covered lawn actually looked like a treasure map from all the urine drizzled upon it the night before.  Every now and again, I would wake up to the lawn being mowed. I often wonder how it happened. Being home most of the day as a stay-at-home-dad, I was in the position to know: lawnmowers are loud you see. Thus, all the more exciting to finally see the culprit who was in charge of ridding my neighborhood of this sore sight.

After studying the man for a good amount of time, I returned to my theology book. I noticed that he was wearing a worn out, gray, stained shirt that reached about the middle of his belly button. His hairy belly splattered out just enough to make those walking by feel weird. His cut-off shorts had the unfortunate advantage of revealing way too much of his small, blindingly white legs. His white tube socks pulled up mid-calf and the classy black Velcro shoes looking brand spanking new. Trying to withhold passing judgment on the fellow’s fashion, I tried with get eagerness to imagine the man’s inner beauty, for after all, “This man was working for a living,” I said “and you got to respect a man who works for a living,” I told myself, as thoughts of my wife at worked flashed before me. 

The lawnmower started right up to my surprise, and the man began swaying back and forth throughout the lawn. It could have only been about four or five moments before I heard the mower stop. I looked up thinking to myself that the long grass must have jammed the blade, but to my astonishment, the man was now sitting on the front steps lighting up a cigarette.

“You got to be kidding me,” I thought.

“Is he really taking a break already!?”

I chuckled a bit and began reading. Soon I heard the mower going again.

“Well that was quick,” I noted to myself.

But then the mower stopped again only a few moments latter. This time I stood up to see what could have possibly caused the disruption of this project this time. I noticed the man huffing and puffing while slowing lowering himself to the ground to gather his breath. Looking like he passed out, the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. He pushed a few buttons and was soon talking to someone for only a few seconds. He hung up and placed the phone back into his pocket. Soon, a skinny, old woman emerged from the apartment building carrying a Coke. She handed the soda can to the whaled gentlemen, who subsequently drained it like nectar. After a couple more huffs and puffs, the man was back to work.

By this time my book had been placed on the ground. I was befuddled with this man. I could not take my eyes off of him. Hours must have passed. It was incredible. I had never seen anything quite like it. A lawn I could have mowed in a half an hour was taking this man now 5 hours.  More cigarettes, more Coke, and more huffing and puffing. The phone would ring and the job would stop. The old women would appear, and the job would stop. Stop, stop, stop … this was the pattern. I couldn’t wait to tell my wife what I witnessed this day.

The evening finally came. My wife pulled into the driveway to be met by her energetic husband. I told her she would not believe what happened to me. I began to describe all that had transpired as we entered our house. Laughter and “Oh, my!” were heard periodically throughout my tale. I had finally dazzled her with my story telling ability when she changed the subject to what I had done all day. I looked at her perplexed.

“I just told you,” I said.

“Really,” she sharply said “all you did today was watch that man fail at mowing a lawn?”

“Yeeees,” I cautiously said.

“What about dinner, the laundry, your homework, and picking up the house? She demanded, as she continued with, “I noticed the bed is not made, and the refrigerator is empty. I thought you were going to go to the store for me?”

“Right,” I pusillanimously muttered, as I lowered my head in shame.