No lady...

Stuart and Baci, the beautiful Samoyed, and I went shopping today to get presents for his family, which need to be mailed out soon. I put Baci's belled velvet collar on him and he jingled his way through the shopping centers. I wore an honest to goodness holiday sweater, (a relatively tasteful one, no santas or snowmen) to maximize our cheerfulness enducing potential. All day, whereever we went, there were people who were very happy to see us. They would stop us and ask to pet the dog, and chat with us. That went on pretty much all afternoon. Going shopping with Baci along is not "competitive speed shopping." It's slow, and friendly and very social. So the following encounter really caught me by surprise. On the way home, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few items. When we came back out, there was now a huge grey Ford Explorer who had parked in the space next to us. The car was well over the white line, encroaching on our space, especially toward the back door. I was opening the back door to put the groceries in the back seat, and bumped the Ford Explorer, by accident. It was a gentle tap, no scratches, no dings in the wheel well. There was a woman in the car who popped out to yell at me. "Hey! You hit my car! Couldn't you tell that you hit my car?" "Yes, I'm sorry. I tried to avoid it. It was gentle, and there was no harm done. Sorry." I then opened the front door, without hitting her car. And because I only weigh 115 pounds, I was able to squeeze into the front seat, but it was not easy to keep from hitting her car again. What I didn't do was yell back at her, something along these lines: "If you had done a better job of parking that monster of an SUV, I wouldn't have hit it at all. It wasn't like I was trying to hit it, lady. I was trying NOT to hit it." So, at times like this, I sometimes feel like a sap, because even though I was in the wrong. I DID in fact hit her car... a little. But she was wrong too. I already felt bad about hitting her car, as a matter of fact, and she made me feel even worse. I did what I could to make her feel better. I apologized, instead of yelling back at her. This is a small example of how we all have to engage our "skillful means" as much as possible to keep the holiday stress from getting out of hand, in this case, by pulling back from the late afternoon confrontation. Now, what do we do with that energy? What to do with that "I feel like pond scum" feeling that you get when you held your tongue, or when you genuinely did something wrong that you regret, even if it was a minor tiff with a stranger who probably didn't have nearly as much fun shopping all day as I had with Stuart and Baci. I find it helpful to draw on a Buddhist principle of "no self" which is that my "self" is not permanent, unchanging, or independent of other factors. And here's the kicker in this situation, neither is hers. There was "no lady" for me to get mad at. There was no permanent, unchanging, angry woman there. Apart from this weird little thirty second perception of her, she will go on to have dinner, to put her feet up, and maybe even regret that she yelled at that lady in the cheerful holiday sweater. So, with that picture in mind, maybe we both can let it go, allow our patience to return, and be none the worse for it. We need to put our patience into practical use, every day, but especially during the holidays.