It’s not personal
I have a confession to make, I have road rage. The question I beg to ask though is how can you not if you live & drive in a city like Karachi?
At every point in the road, someone is breaking the law. You will find an SUV loaded with guards waving at you to go a certain way for no good reason. Every other road is dug up, and every 100 meters there is a pothole. Any person who wishes to abide by the social contract is bound to lose their cool. More often than not, who does my anger affect? Myself and my family.
I have found a few fixes for this. One, I avoid driving as much as I can. I opt for car-hailing services for my daily commute. Two, I chose to work from the office at usually non-rush hours. I get to work at 7ish and leave from work around 3ish. This solves the problem partially. Yet, it is not a complete fix, we all have to sooner or later drive through busy times.
Recently, I figured out a way to get less angry on the road. I was watching a clip somewhere on anger and the person I was listening to said something interesting. “It’s not personal”, sounds like an obvious & common-sense statement. There is some logic behind it. Allow me to elaborate.
In the past, whenever somebody would cut into my line or an SUV with guards loaded on it would be rude I would take it personally. I would take it as a personal affront to my being. When I realize that the person who cut through the line of vehicles is not doing this to me as a personal affront but instead is doing this as a matter of habit. The person who is driving the car is uncivilized in that manner. Or that the SUV with guards on it, the owner of this vehicle bought this car and put guards behind it for this very reason. The owner is probably an egoistic human being and it’s precisely for this purpose that they are doing what they are doing, my anger seems to change into pity and distaste. Rather than losing my cool about it, I tend to let it slide more often than not when I realize that “it’s not personal” it is just the way it is.
I have been aiming to internalize this concept over the past few days and it has helped me drive and operate in our mad city with more calm. Who do I do it for? I do it for myself and my family. I think there are very legitimate reasons to be angry about in this world however, it’s best for our well-being that those things are few and far between. For the rest, we can just let it go by realizing that most affronts to us are not personal.
