Hurting people hurt others?

Have you ever found yourself starting the day on a sour note? Perhaps with someone being rude to you or just avoiding you, getting a flat tire, or feeling invisible while waiting for a shopkeeper to attend to you?

And the ripple effect it creates sets the tone for the day.

For me, such an experience usually makes me feel terrible all day long and speak equally badly to someone else. It’s so easy to allow someone else’s behavior or words to shape our day.

It has happened to me often — someone says something mean, and even if I don’t want to, I end up snapping at someone else for no fault of theirs.

It reminds me of what many people say: hurting people hurt others.

But does the hurt or bad behavior by someone really give us a license to behave poorly with someone else?

If I am honest, it almost sounds like an excuse to mistreat others, an excuse to run others down, an excuse to be lazy, an excuse to abandon your dreams. Sure, it does help to see the other person is hurting, but for me, it doesn’t justify bad behavior.

That’s when I started experimenting with something I read in Wayne Dyer’s “Being in Balance.” He speaks about how we can’t influence what’s happening outside, but we can control what happens within us.

He gives the example of a candle flame. I find it helps me quite a lot. I won’t say I have perfected it, but it does help very often. I imagine a candle flame within me, and…