What’s That Look About?
Laughing at oneself is good for the soul. I actually welcome getting caught in the tangle of my weaknesses, when my behaviors prove to me what a fool I can be. It knocks me off my high horse to the ground, which is where I’d prefer to live. I wouldn’t mind being cut down to size when no one notices. It’s embarrassing to look stupid, insensitive, or unaware, like the time my dad asked the next door neighbor when she was due to give birth and she wasn’t pregnant.
Today, as I tried to pull off the highway into the “Hole in One” for their delicious doughnuts, coffee, and hot chocolate as Ray and I headed up Cape to get him an MRI for his back, the car that pulled in two ahead of us just stopped, leaving me hanging out onto the busy road. I waited and then honked. At a snail’s pace the car eventually moved far enough forward so that we and the car ahead of us could pull in.
As we walked in, we kibitzed with the passengers in the second car about how slow the first car was, laughing that they still hadn’t settled on a parking spot. I looked over at the idling car and gave the woman passenger “the look.” I’m famous for it. I inherited it from my grandmother and her son, my father. It says “Don’t think you got away with it. Your behavior has been noted.”
As we exited with our sour cream and nutty doughnuts and drinks, I watched as a very elderly man struggled with the wheelchair that he patiently was moving to the passenger door to help his disabled wife to breakfast. If I hadn’t needed to see over the steering wheel to drive, I would have shrunk to the size of a pea. Yes, the elderly man should have pulled fully into the parking lot so that no traffic hazard was created by his indecision or addled state, but he and his wife did not need my look to remind them that their behavior was irritating to others. I’m sure they get it a lot, and it shamed me that my desire to control the workings of the world added to their burden.
It really is about control for me. When I was a kid, there was a cartoon in the comic strip entitled “There Out to Be a Law.” I’m sure the feeling that other people are nuts and need outside help dates back to pre-historic times. Today, a friend sent a series of pictures that captured people doing really stupid things, like cramming two cars into the toll booth opening because neither one wanted to yield and then neither could get out. Had I been passing by, I would have given them “the look” and shook my head with amazement that anyone could be that dumb and stubborn. (I probably then would have read that one of them was racing to the hospital with a pregnant spouse, perhaps the one who lived next door to us years ago.)
When Ray and I give each other “the look,” (I taught it to him unintentionally), we each secretly love it when the other has misread the situation and jumped to the wrong conclusions. “That’s not what I said. I said that outfit makes you look hunky, not heavy. Say you’re sorry!” Sometimes it can feel to each of us that the other is playing “gotcha” with judgmental looks about unwelcomed behavior or comments. When we talk about it, we admit that we’re trying to control the behavior of the other with our sighs or looks of “I saw that,” or “I heard that.” And just as such games of “gotcha” don’t help a romantic relationship, neither do they help create peace in the world among its inhabitants. Each time Ray or I give “the look,” the other withdraws unconsciously. I suspect that everyone in the world who senses that others are impatient with, or judgmental of, their behavior withdraws into themselves too.
Often on our walk in the morning, Ray and I will pass a person or two who we decide looks very lonely and angry. They avoid eye contact and fail to acknowledge our consistently chirpy “Good mornings.” Our initial reaction is to personalize their rejection and anticipate our next encounter so that I can give them “the look.” But then, we usually talk about how some, if not most people, have had so many unpleasant experiences with life that they endure their days rather than anticipate what might be fun about them. It’s like a dog that has been abused. It cowers or growls.
What frightens me is wondering how many times I have contributed to someone’s bad experience of life with ‘the look.” By-in-large, I think my positive karma has been far more prolific than my negative karma, but when I catch myself in behaviors that prompt shameful recognition of my insecurity-motivated control of others, I sigh with disappointment.
The adage “Do good and leave the rest to God. Don’t worry be happy,” reminds of the need to “Do no harm.” That often means, leave other people alone. Wish them well, forgive their “mistakes,” and know that they didn’t get up that morning with the intention of ruining your day.
I hope the woman in the wheelchair and her husband had a wonderful breakfast, uninfected by the impatience of those around them. I also hope they are more centered than I sometimes fail to be, and forgive me my lack of tolerance and patience. But for my own sake, I’m not sorry it happened. It was another good reminder of the distance I need to travel to become the person I want to be.
