Haiku 2023–320

I deleted it

but I shouldn’t have written

it in the first place

— —

When I wrote this haiku a couple of weeks ago, it meant one thing to me. Today it serves up a completely different lesson.

I received an email two weeks ago that put me into a blind rage. I spent the next two hours writing a pointy reply with the intent to right some wrongs. Just before I hit the send button, I hesitated. Did I really want to start a prolonged conflict with the author of the email?

The email made valid points. Ninety percent of the content was accurate and most of the pointy parts were directed at someone else. I’ll admit it, my pride was wounded because a project I was in charge of was going off the rails, but I had little control over what went wrong.

Two hours later, I deleted my original reply and wrote a simple reply acknowledging receipt and nothing more. I couldn’t get my two hours back, but I kept the relationship intact.

Anger is impermanent. At some point in time, it dwindles to nothing and disappears. I delayed the posting of this haiku for a couple of weeks because I kept coming up with better ideas. Now that I finally have a need to post it (I had nothing else in the hopper for this morning), I had to spend several minutes trying to remember why I even wrote this haiku in the first place. That is the lesson here — why add fuel to the flames when all you want is for the fire to go away?