How Rude!

I notice that I go through phases where certain things irk me more than usual. Without a doubt, the thing that irks me the most on any occasion is other people. People really are the worst. One of the worst types of people are rude people.

Before I go any further, I've actually been keeping my blog pretty positive. That's a big accomplishment for little ol' pessimistic me. This is not a roast fest. As always, I am trying to get out some thoughts in a coherent manner and possibly share advice or help someone else in a similar situation.

On that note, a lot of people started school today or start this week. I'm currently in the third week teaching, and so I have already seen a lot of rudeness. And, to be honest, most of it has actually been from my co-workers, not from my students.

**Sidenote: Sometimes rudeness is tied with getting your feelings hurt, and so you can come across as rude and not mean to. Therefore, all of the rudeness I have perceived may not have been meant as rudeness. But, and I always say this with as much humility as possible, I am pretty intuitive and am usually not wrong about people, and I've been around enough blatant or subtle rudeness to be pretty confident about what is what.

Here are the things that I have witnessed in the past two weeks that I consider rude:

1. Inviting people to things in front of people without inviting everyone.

Listen, either A. Include everyone or B. Take your private conversation elsewhere. If you're having a party or going to a movie and don't want everyone around you to come, don't talk about it in front of everyone. When you're planning a weekend outing with one person in a room of three or more, just stop yourself. You may not be meaning to be rude, but just try thinking about how left out that other person might feel. And yes, even if suddenly realize they're there and invite them too, guess what? Most likely they will feel like a second option. Like they're invited just because you feel the need to invite them. They will most likely say no thank you, even if they really want to. Because their feelings have already been hurt. Can you always avoid hurting peoples' feelings? No. But can you not discuss plans with someone when other people who aren't invited are around? Yes. Just, yes.

2. Pettiness or immaturity or drama creating.

This is mostly about what happens if you perceive someone is rude to you. The correct response is not to sulk or avoid eye contact or cease to acknowledge that person's existence or to talk bad about what that person said or did to another person. You actually have some options when you feel like someone has been rude to you. A. Leave the room or situation to give yourself some time to reassess what happened. B. Address the person and ask for forgiveness just in case you did hurt him/her (I hear you, socially anxious people). C. Let it blow over. I mean really let it go, not let it sit in you and make you become a passive aggressive, bitter person. I mean just let it go. Life is not worth spending so much time and energy being upset at someone.

3. Calling people names.

And I mean any name that the person hasn't approved. Any nickname must be approved, even if you think it is cute or means you are close to them. The other person may not see it as such. You must always ask what someone wants to be called. Names hold a ton of power. They are so closely tied to our identity, and they can easily be misplaced. Calling someone "stupid" gets ingrained in someone over time. And please never use the incredibly cowardly excuse that you call people names because you want to toughen them up. Do not be like my brother, who repetitively called me the c-word and would always laugh and say he didn't mean it or was just doing it because I needed to not take things to personally. Do not be like my brother, who continued to call me disgusting names even after I told him how it made me feel and I mustered the courage to tell him to stop. Do not be like my brother, who I had to exclude from my life because he could not learn to call me by my proper name.

4. Passive aggressive sarcasm.

Perhaps one of my favorites. Here is the thing. If you insult someone and then say you were just kidding or didn't mean it, you are being passive aggressive. Someone once said that there is some truth behind every lie, and that comedy creates a great cover for anger and abuse. We think words like "I'm kidding" erase what we said before, but this is not the case. (Similarly, with humans, the words "I'm sorry" do not make your actions go away or make them acceptable, but that's a topic for another day). Sarcasm can include name calling, by the way, and as a whole it should really be used rarely. In my professional (ha) opinion, it is not appropriate for the workplace, especially among students and teachers. There is something about sarcasm that just creates a negative atmosphere. Perhaps this is because it is so hard to know what is really true in sarcasm, and muddy truth keeps us from seeing, hearing, and acting clearly.

5. Bugs.

Bugs are so rude. I dislike them so much. Ugh, go away bugs.

6. Yourself.

I can't not talk about being rude to yourself, because I am the queen at negative self-talk. I have found that I must give myself time to think about any situation where someone has been rude to me or I have maybe been rude to someone. I must have time to think about the situation. In the moment I am too easily heated or offended. It is also helpful to sometimes ask a wise friend about a situation. Getting a different perspective, especially an outside perspective, can be helpful in knowing how to deal with a rude person. Of course, the short answer in what to do with rude people is to either A. avoid them, B. forgive them, or C. love them. Or should I say we must always forgive and love them, but we do not always have to place ourselves around them to enable them to continue being rude. And this is what we must do to ourselves. As we can't avoid ourselves (even if we want to), we must continually work on forgiving and loving ourselves.

Which of these rude people or encounters do you experience the most? Are you able to deal with these types of rude people or situations? And I mean deal with. Do you know when to A. leave the room B. confront the person or C. let it blow over? Whatever you do, "Do not let the sun go down on your anger" (Eph 4:26).