Articles
Do You Act -- Or React
[The following excellent article came to my attention some 35 years ago. I have made frequent references to it. I have just "re-found" it and wish to share it with you in its entirety. It originally appeared in the Chicago Daily News and then in the Readers Digest. - RHW]
I walked with my friend, a Quaker, to the news-stand the other night, and he bought a paper, thanking the newsie politely. The newsie didn't even acknowledge it.
"A sullen fellow, isn't he?" I commented.
"Oh, he's that way every night," shrugged my friend.
"Then why do you continue to be so polite to him?" I asked.
"Why not?" inquired my friend. "Why should I let him decide how I'm going to act?"
As I thought about this incident later, it occurred to me that the important word was "act." My friend acts toward people; most of us react toward them.
He has a sense of inner balance which is lacking in most of us; he knows who he is, what he stands for, how he should behave. He refuses to return incivility for incivility, because then he would no longer be in command of his own conduct. When we are enjoined in the Bible to return good for evil, we look upon this as a moral injunction - which it is. But it is also a psychological prescription for our emotional health.
Nobody is unhappier than the perpetual reactor. His center of emotional gravity is not rooted within himself, where it belongs, but in the world outside him. His spiritual temperature is always being raised or lowered by the social climate around him, and he is a mere creature at the mercy of these elements.
Praise gives him a feeling of euphoria, which is false, because it does not last and it does not come from self-approval. Criticism depresses him more than it should, because it confirms his own secret shaky opinion of himself. Snubs hurt him, and the merest suspicion of unpopularity in any quarter rouses him to bitterness.
A serenity of spirit cannot be achieved until we become the masters of our own actions and attitudes. To let another determine whether we shall be rude or gracious, elated or depressed, is to relinquish control over our own personalities, which is ultimately all we possess....The only true possession is self-possession.
[NOTE: Isn't that a dandy article? Why not read it over again and then ask yourself, "Am I acting or reacting?" "Am I in complete possession of my emotions and actions or am I letting my friends and brethren make a balloon out of me which explodes at the slightest prick?" Now we should not be hypocritical in our actions. But we should cultivate an even-keeled emotional stability which will enable us to take "snubs": and hurtful words or deeds without "upsetting our boat" and causing everyone else to get wet in the process. - RHW]
