ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

ATTITUDE is EVERYTHING!

October 2019 – There isn’t anything new about that headline. The philosophy and the wording have been around for centuries. It was re-invented so eloquently in the voyeur-vision (UK version) 1990 political drama series ‘House of Cards’, starring the late Ian Richardson in the role of Francis Urquhart. He created the effortlessly repeatable response to so many potential arguments: “You might think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.” And then slyly smirked at the camera. I use these words quite often.

You might also think that, after centuries of arguments, wars, ‘I’m-right-you-are-wrong’ philosophy and egos on steroids, that as a nation we might be in a better social/political/relationship condition than we are. Clearly, we aren’t. For the most part what we see is what we’ve got, warts and all.

WHICH MEANS that if we could learn to adjust our attitudes, we could change everything. Some call it ‘biting your tongue’. It brings to mind the old joke about a stranger in Ireland asking an Irishman how best to get to Dublin? The Irishman allegedly replied: “Well, it might be better if you didn’t start from here.”

Some years ago, after a number of heart attacks and strokes, I submitted to triple by-pass heart surgery. Apart from providing me with another 20+ years of very enjoyable life that otherwise I would not have had, it also changed much about the way I look at the world. I consider myself extremely fortunate. My brother, four years younger than me, had one heart attack and died in his own back garden.

But, for me, after a lengthy period of convalescence I returned to my place of work and my immediate boss gave back to me the office I had occupied before I went away. (Someone else had used it while I was away, of course, but I was given it back. That was important to me). Friendly and familiar colleagues welcomed me back. Everything seemed familiar and comfortable and I knew I was very fortunate.

Almost the first thing I did as I surveyed my restored fiefdom was to peel off the ‘in’ and ‘out’ labels on the ‘in’ and ‘out’ letter trays on my desktop and replaced them with ‘easy come’ and ‘easy go’. 
My attitude had changed because a man (a Professor) who had paid attention to his homework when he was a youth, had learned (possibly invented) the necessary surgical skills to give my life back to me. He had stood beside my anaesthetized body and held my heart in his hands while he and his team re-plumbed the pipe-work inside me. That is the sobering thought that changed my attitudes. I’d discovered that I wasn’t bullet proof after all.

Of course, I’d lost, or at least weakened, my competitive instinct at the same time. The war zone we call ‘business’ had become less important to me than it once had been. My responsibilities in life hadn’t changed but my attitude towards them had.

OK. That’s my tale about attitude, so what to say about ‘a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger’? Please don’t assume that makes me a softie. It doesn’t.

You see, I’ve learned that I came into this world with nothing beyond what my parents gave me. I shan’t leave this world with anything that I’ve acquired in the interim and everybody else is exactly the same. The baseball-type hat I acquired in the 1980s in Dubai, showing an image of what looked like a Rolls-Royce car and bearing the legend “He who dies with the most toys, wins”, was a lie. As is the Michael Douglas line “greed is good” (in the film Wall Street).

I don’t have to win every argument. I don’t have to be the ‘King of the castle’ and you don’t have to be the dirty rascal. I don’t have to live my life as a daily win-or-lose competition. Now that I’ve discovered it, that truth has set me free but I had to become powerless on an operating table to discover it. Not just helpless; powerless.

I am no longer powerless.

I have the power to say

‘Peace be upon you’

Rather than snarl

‘You are wrong and I am right’

or

‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’

Yea, though I walk through the valley . . . 

I will fear no evil.

Why? 

Because a gentle answer turns away wrath.

Think about it.