WE MUST UNDERSTAND BEFORE WE JUDGE
WE MUST UNDERSTAND BEFORE WE JUDGE
What I learned this week from dealing with my difficult neighbor:
I would describe my neighbor as a control freak and occasional bully. I believe he sees himself as king or boss of our cul-de-sac. He demands orders and he expects us to follow through. In the past his difficult personality has led to him telling us when to cut the grass and where we can and can’t park. He has thrown sticks from the road onto my front yard, used his leaf blower to blow fallen leaves from his yard into my yard, and more. The times I didn’t give in to his demands, he called me lazy and said I sleep all day instead of doing yard work. Recently he raked a huge pile of fallen leaves from the road and left it in front of my mailbox. He then blamed his younger nephew for the pile. In the past, people that live in my household had exchanged words with my neighbor in a heated rage, coming to no resolution and just adding to the tension. After several months of tension, we were growing frustrated.
The bickering between my neighbor’s household and mine was leading nowhere, so I decided to take a different approach. Yesterday I went outside to rake the leaves in my front yard (the pile in front of the mailbox was still there.) As I was raking, my difficult neighbor approached me to say hello and brought up the bad weather from the night before. I wanted this man to understand that the times he felt I was neglecting my yard, because my yard work wasn’t up to his standards, did not come from a place of laziness. Here this man assumed I had bad intentions.
That was far from the truth. In attempts to reason with him and gain his understanding, I explained that my fiancé travels for work, so when he’s not around I am left to do the yard work by myself. I don’t have very much experience with yard work (e.g.: I have no clue how to shape the shrubs), and I have an extremely busy schedule so yard work isn’t always a top priority. He listened to my words, nodding and seeming to finally understand. About an hour later my neighbor came back with his own rake and a tarp. He raked the leaf pile in front of my mailbox and took it away. I thanked him. My heart overcome with gratitude, I viewed his change in behavior as a step in the right direction.
My point is my neighbor is my neighbor. He is stuck in his ways, stubborn, and particular. I can’t control his difficult behavior but I can control the way I respond. When he comes at me or my family with anger, we do not have to respond back with anger. When someone comes at you angry and you choose anger, you are really choosing ego. Ego is the need to be right, correct, or feel like you have the upper hand. Ego is control. Does it really matter who is right or wrong? I chose to communicate with my neighbor using compassion and understanding. The end result was a success we both benefited from, working together to complete the yard work.
Empathy is the first step to healing any relationship. Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling the heart of another. Don’t be so quick to judge, you never know what internal battles a person is quietly fighting. Understand that everyone is doing the best they can at any given time. People can only do so much with the understanding, knowledge, and awareness they have. Like my therapist says: Some days people are only capable of being an asshole. LOL! I challenge you next time you are in a heated argument to choose empathy over ego and watch the conversation shift from anger to peace.
