Ignorance. Incompetence. Arrogance.
Ignorance. Incompetence. Arrogance.
Everywhere. In thee. In me.
You don’t have to look further than the mirror to find all three.
But there are degrees.
Violence — is it personal?
At the hospital, the nurse manager jumps down my throat for not calling out her name when I had come to the nursing station, to alert them about a psychotic patient revving up, with threats to harm her nursing assistant. But there’s no time for niceties.
I’m nearly blinded with fear for the nursing assistant and then blinded, again, with my own anger at being derailed from my mission by this simple attack on the way I delivered my urgent message. I’m right.
On further reflection, I see she had a tough day, on the edge, after word of a suicide. She cannot control the dead, so she tries to control me.
I’m crushed at the final fact that I must soften and I must change. That unless I face my own ignorance, incompetence and arrogance, I will never be able to quiet my anger and humble my soul, to make space for peace — to make space for listening — to make space for my own changes in how I relate to someone else’s ignorance, incompetence and arrogance.
These are the barriers to change in each of us.
These are the fuel for jihad.
We are each wrong.
How can we find a way to reach each other and change ourselves?
How do I tolerate ignorance, incompetence and arrogance and make peace?
