Offensives

I had an interesting phone conversation this morning. It was one of those Gee, thanks for the present (why the heck did you get me that?) sort of calls. The kind soul had sent me pots, your standard cooking pots, and I had no idea why or what for. Naturally I wasn't looking forward to making the call. But I figured I could worm my way through the dialogue with my standard set of generalizations, vagaries and appropriate grunts (and still be fairly honest - or at least not tell a big lie). So I dialed the number, started chatting to the person, and then about three seconds into my Thank you for being so thoughtful speech, she burst out laughing. Turns out that these pots had been intended for another Christopher; the mix-up being the work of an overzealous kid who gave them to the first Chris he came across. We both laughed then - it was such a relief not to have to tiptoe over eggshells. A lot of stress could be cut out of our lives if we didn't have the strain of trying not to offend people all the time. I'm not talking about big things; it's all the petty stuff that wears us down. We're always having to consider whether Auntie Margaret is in a huff because we haven't written her a letter (ink and paper, mind) for some time, or what we should say when (female) aquaintances ask How does this look? or whether being absent from this or that function will be taken as a slight. It might seem that there's not much we can do about any of that - telling people not to get offended rarely works. But there is something we can do about the problem as a whole: we can attempt to be a bit more tolerant ourselves. There's only one person you can successfully command to toughen up or let it go - and that's yourself. If you're the only one doing it, at least it's a start. Until everyone else joins you though, keep practising those ever versatile grunts.