Choosing To Accept People's Criticism

#11 - Just because people try to give you crap doesn't mean you have to accept it.

No one knows why unhappy and miserable people try to take out their inner frustrations and problems out on innocent bystanders and those of us unfortunate enough to have to deal with them in those states. Maybe they're having a bad day, perhaps they're of the belief that life has dealt them a bad hand, or they were raised that way and like to bring others into their personal drama. The potential reasons are infinite.

Irregardless of why, it's up to each one of us whether or not to accept their, for lack of a better word, crap and let it affect us or not. To illustrate: Once there was a yogi who had a reputation for being unflappable. No matter what you said to him, he wouldn't respond negatively or retaliate in any way. So this guy from the city heard about the legend of this yogi who is as cool as a cucumber and the man considered it a personal challenge to provoke the yogi into defending himself or even perhaps lashing out verbally and/or physically at the man.

So this guy finds where the yogi is and not even getting his name, begins tearing into him, upbraiding and insulting him deeply in a variety of ways personally, and even into his his family. When that doesn't work, the man called into question the yogis manhood, his sexual orientation, and even let fly some racial slurs. Nothing was out-of-bounds. After about 20 or so minutes the man realizes that nothing will move the yogi, no matter what he says. Exasperated, the man finally throws up his hands in surrender to the yogi, "I don't get it! What kind of guy doesn't defend himself and let's a total stranger completely run roughshod over him, and even worse, his entire family?! Have you no honor?! Are you a total coward?! Do you even understand English?!"

The yogi, after several uncomfortable long seconds of silence, says to the man, "Stay here," and walks off. Confused, yet intrigued, the man says to himself, "I hope he's not getting a shotgun to blow my head off". A minute later the yogi reappears with what appears to be manure in his hand. "Take this," he says to the disgusted man and tries to hand him the rancid feces. "Are you crazy, old man?! No way I'm taking that!" "You will not accept my offering?", the yogi countered. "Why would I ever do that?", the man asked sarcastically, "are you some kind of sicko or something?" "Well, you came to me with diarrhea of the mouth, spewing your hateful, ill-informed filth and I've never had the displeasure of knowing you. Why would I accept that from you?" the yogi responded calmly.

With that the man finally showed the yogi some respect, bowed his head, apologized for his ill-founded hostility, thanked him for the lesson and gracefully leaves, wiser than when he came. The moral, of course, is if a crazy, old guy offers to shake your hand with crap on it, get out of dodge before he does something really crazy!