It was Valentine's Day, and I'd picked Sarah up at work to take her out to lunch. Accepting her flowers, she told me about her choice of restaurants: a romantic little waterfront place.
This, unfortunately, required that I make a very difficult left turn. Minutes went by. Just as one lane cleared, traffic magically percolated into another. No one was letting me through. After five minutes, one particularly obtuse driver pushed me over the edge.
"THANKS A LOT, YOU PUSEOUS CUNT!" I snarled.
Eventually, I made my left and, that task complete, noticed that my date was very quiet indeed. Oh. Right. My c-bomb.
"I'm sorry I got angry back there," I said. "Not quite what I had in mind for Valentine's Day."
In the quasi-sincere manner that someone accepts your apology while their nose is still bleeding from your sucker-punch, Sarah forgave me. Kinda.
I tell this story because it neatly illustrates something I dislike about myself. Not my profanity, so much—the fact that my apology, though freely offered, wasn't heartfelt. Here was my inner dialogue at the time:
Oh. Right. My c-bomb. Dripping with rage. On Valentine's Day. That would upset any woman, you moron. You've subverted the entire purpose of this outing. You'd better apologize fast before this festers. Contain the damage. That's what a normal person would do.
And so, in a purely intellectual exercise, I apologized. But that woman who cut me off? Inwardly, I stood by my c-bomb.
Astoundingly, it took me decades to evolve to this point. By my calculations, this means that I started life as a paramecium. What changed? I became more self-aware. At one time, I wouldn't have anticipated that most people would consider my conduct atrocious. In fact, if criticized I would have gone to the mat for my right to drop c-bombs on the deserving, and dammit, Sarah, you just better get on board. What's your problem, anyway?
Everyone in my family is that way. We're always righteous, never to blame. Infallibility was enjoyable for a while, but somewhere along the line I learned that my world view was 1) nonsense and 2) not normal, decent human behavior. I can't always feel that, but I know it, which I dare say puts me one rung higher on the evolutionary ladder than my relatives. Let's say I made "virus."
This weekend I spoke with a friend about her husband, who is lacking in self-awareness of this kind. He is oblivious to how his behavior affects others, how it dents his marriage and children, and he doesn't seem to care.
This leads me to wonder how much thought people give to this. Am I alone?
I give it considerable thought. I know I'm wired differently and that it affects my relationships, and I labor to adjust so that others don't have to. But how about you? How are you wired differently, and how do you shift the burden of adjustment from others to yourself?