reactions and lessons
Newton's 3rd Law of Motion states that "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". Newton is obviously talking about physics, a subject I know very little about, but it gets quoted a lot, and it also has its own entry at Wikipedia, so I guess it'll be alright if I regard it as true, at least for the sake of this humble post.
If I expand Newton's 320 year-old statement beyond the realm of physics, I guess it would say something rather close to something my big brother liked to say when I was younger. "If you shoot," he said, "there bound to be some ricochets".
I've been thinking about this today -- what is the right way to react when someone really pisses you off? I've been thinking about it, when I remembered a quote from the West Wing -- "What is the virtue of a proportional response?". A proportional response in a case like mine is good if that was the first time that this someone pissed you off, or if it got you just a little ticked off, but if this type of thing is done by the same person on a regular basis, I am forced to wonder, in Aaron Sorkin's words -- "what is the virtue of a proportional response"?
If someone constantly irks you, and you don't let it slide, you let him know they did that, but a short time later he does it again, the problem may not be in that person. The problem may lie in the way you expressed yourself the first (and second) time, and sometimes, just sometimes, in order to make the message stick, you have to resort to a disproportional response. Not necessarily a dooms-day scenario, where all hell breaks loose, but something that is somewhat more than was warranted.
And although I know this is the right thing to do, and this would probably make things better in the long run, I can't help but feel guilty that I had to resort to the disproportional response.
If I expand Newton's 320 year-old statement beyond the realm of physics, I guess it would say something rather close to something my big brother liked to say when I was younger. "If you shoot," he said, "there bound to be some ricochets".
I've been thinking about this today -- what is the right way to react when someone really pisses you off? I've been thinking about it, when I remembered a quote from the West Wing -- "What is the virtue of a proportional response?". A proportional response in a case like mine is good if that was the first time that this someone pissed you off, or if it got you just a little ticked off, but if this type of thing is done by the same person on a regular basis, I am forced to wonder, in Aaron Sorkin's words -- "what is the virtue of a proportional response"?
If someone constantly irks you, and you don't let it slide, you let him know they did that, but a short time later he does it again, the problem may not be in that person. The problem may lie in the way you expressed yourself the first (and second) time, and sometimes, just sometimes, in order to make the message stick, you have to resort to a disproportional response. Not necessarily a dooms-day scenario, where all hell breaks loose, but something that is somewhat more than was warranted.
And although I know this is the right thing to do, and this would probably make things better in the long run, I can't help but feel guilty that I had to resort to the disproportional response.