You may feel the emotion.
But you should not cling to it.
You cannot always choose what you feel.
But you can choose
whether to cling to it—
whether to turn it into attachment or desire.
Looking back,
I was standing far too close to it.
So close that it felt hot,
almost sticky.
If I had not been inside the situation,
but had been able to see it from the outside,
I might have been able to stay light in tone
while still remaining firm.
Of course, that is easy to say in hindsight.
It is not an easy thing to do.
In the end, my response was inappropriate.
I failed to get my point across,
and all that remained was discomfort on both sides.
Perhaps this realization came a little late.
Late enough that I can call it
a lesson learned through experience.
Still, it was probably a case study
I would have had to encounter sooner or later.
If a similar situation happens again?
Well… I’m not sure.
Could I handle even a variation of the same problem?
When I am suddenly placed in an uncomfortable situation—
one that feels inappropriate, unfair, or simply wrong—
the first thing I need to be able to do
is pause the moment.
Then I need to take one step back
and shift into something like an omniscient point of view—
to observe myself,
and the situation,
from the outside.
Come to think of it,
perhaps another important question is whether I can slow time down as much as possible.
That may be one of the key skills.
More fundamentally,
I keep coming back to the same conclusion:
I need to build the system sooner rather than later.
Source: Boundaries in Everyday Life — Walking Through the Rai
