Sunday, August 30, 2009

Mirror Synchronicity: The downside of insight

Recently I was talking to a friend on the phone and she suddenly started sounding very angry. For me, it was out of the blue and I was surprised and a little hurt. I didn't know what I had done to deserve the tone that I was hearing. I asked her - "You sound angry" and she said that she was. She was irritated with me because she said I always had a negative outlook on things.

I actually think I am a very optimistic person, but I also believe in the philosophy "hope for the best but plan for the worst." Sometimes when people tell me things that they are planning, I can see things they haven't thought of but when I bring it up, they think that I'm being pessimistic.

Then last night another friend yelled at me because I made a comment about a fire pit. I am a red cross disaster responder and I see fires every day happen from really benign situations. Fire pits, cigarettes, stray lighters, mulch... but my friend was like "enough already with the fire stories!! We don't care!!" (rather mean too).

So with these two incidents happening within relatively close proximity to each other, I am getting the message that I need to adjust. I am grappling with my natural tendency to think three steps ahead and what that means for others when I offer unsolicited comments. I am not telling them what to do. I am not trying to stop them... I just think about consequences and outcomes more than other people... I know now that it's annoying but I know that it's going to be hard to stop. Any suggestions? Hopefully someone in the universe will read this post and help me. I certainly don't want to be annoying people. I'm really just trying to help (and yes, I know that they don't see it that way).

1 comment:

dyinghappy said...

Will be thinking about this, but one idea in the meantime: http://bit.ly/Xfn50