The Space Between Stimulus and Response

I’m at Walmart and the girl checking my groceries is scowling. She doesn’t make eye contact but acts as though every beep of the scanner is a gross personal insult.

I’m driving and someone zooms up behind me, then closely tailgates for the next five minutes.

I’m at the thrift store (Jenna note: I love thrift stores!!) and an employee marches up to me and tells me that my daughter can’t be playing with toys in the middle of the aisle. The employee is clearly angry and I’m at a loss. I need my daughter to be happy so I can shop.

All three of these happened to me within the last month or so, and all were experiences where another person could have caused me to become angry or bitter.

But giving anger for anger doesn’t lift, doesn’t help, doesn’t heal.

Getting angry over small things allows outside forces to determine what kind of a person I am, what kind of a day I’m having, and how I feel about myself and the people around me.

Something is needed, a key that allows us to interact with angry people without becoming angry ourselves.

And so, I have a secret.

It’s almost a super power.

When I exercise my super power, I stay firmly in control. I don’t hand my emotional reins over to strangers and then allow them to make me angry.

Being happy and peaceful is my responsibility and my choice.

Here's my secret:

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. (Viktor E. Frankl)

I choose to make that space positive by humanizing the people around me.

I try to get inside their heads and imagine their lives. I allow myself to empathize; not long ago, I was the one working a long day with mulish customers.

Often I’ll make up a story about these people which I cheerfully assume is more true than not.

These are people, not obstacles or difficulties. These men and women feel tired and get hurt, are hungry or worried, and are making ends meet while serving their families.

These are sons and daughters, mothers and fathers who mean the world to someone, somewhere.

By humanizing potential enemies, I make them into potential friends.

At Walmart, I looked at that girl and wondered how long she’d been on her feet. Was she a young mother? Did she have a little boy or girl at Day Care who was waiting for Mommy to come home? It was Christmastime, too, and my goodness, Walmart is crazytown all December long.

All these are assumptions, but don’t you think some of them are probably true?

“Are you ready for Christmas to be over?” I asked her, smiling.

She groaned. “Yeeeeeeesssssss. It’s been so busy.”

“Well, good luck with everything, and thank you,” I take my groceries and leave.

“Merry Christmas,” she calls after me.

When that truck roared up and acted as though it would happily drive me off of the road, I just kept driving normally, no brake-checking or aggressive retaliation.

I just reminded myself that he was probably late for work and didn't let myself become upset.

Getting angry wouldn’t have affected the other driver at all, but it sure would have affected me. I made myself remember that there was a person driving in that car and kept going forward.

Now we get to the thrift store employee.

I’ve worked customer service before, and I can tell you right now that it's a tough job. It’s really hard to deal with angry customers who think that you are personally responsible for every poor decision ever made. This woman is also working retail, which I bet is even harder than what I used to do.

I reminded myself that she had probably worked a long day. She probably was aching to get off of her feet.

Likely she’s not being paid as much as she could be, so maybe she’s stressed out by finances.

And I’m just going to throw in a sick child too, because that happens. So she’s stressed out about getting her son to the doctor and she’s wondering if he will need to get lab work done and then she’ll somehow have to pay for it.

That’s why she was upset, not because she has a personal vendetta against small children playing in her store.

Maybe next time, I’ll smile and ask her how her day is going.

Maybe I could do something to help her, like run to the store and pick up some Tylenol for her sick son.

See, she and I are almost friends.

-Jenna