Telling someone off

Today, I told someone off. I didn’t mean to tell someone off, but I did. And it was weird because even though I told them off- expressed to them my displeasure and refused to continue in our interaction until they stopped what they were doing- I felt no anger, no animosity toward them, and immediately moved on to the next thing we were doing.

Here’s what happened. I was cutting bread and asking “Bob” for advice about how to slice it (the knife wasn’t all that great). Bob initially responded to my request for advice with instruction, which I took. But then, when I attempted to follow the advice, and the knife wouldn’t cooperate, Bob got frustrated by my hesitance to do what he suggested. He stepped in to help but then directed me, as if I were a child- repeating the same instruction over and over, like a command. This made me feel like an idiot- like he was suggesting that I was the problem, it had nothing to do with the knife, that my hesitance came from something wrong with me, not a legitimate reason to not be able to do what he was asking.

That was when I stopped. I held the knife in place halfway down the loaf while he held the loaf on either ends. He continued to direct me to slice through it but I refused.

“I’m just not going to…” and I didn’t know how to finish my sentence. I just knew that I wasn’t going to be treated that way, I just wasn’t. “I’m not going to…” I said as he repeated the command.

“Please don’t talk to me that way,” I finally said. “It makes me feel like… a dog.”

That’s when he stopped repeating the command. “It makes you feel like a dog?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “I’m just trying to get the bread sliced,” he explained.

“Okay,” I said. And he took the knife and sliced the rest of the loaf.

And then it was done.

Neither of us apologized or said anything else but I had expressed to him how I felt. And honestly, I don’t think he’s going to do it again. Maybe he will, I have no idea, but for me, that’s not the point. I didn’t think about what I was doing, I didn’t plan to tell him off. I wasn’t caught up in the interaction at all. And afterward, I wasn’t upset or hurt or expecting anything from it. I just felt bad in the moment, stopped in response, communicated my feelings, and moved on.

I couldn’t possibly have planned this interaction. Bob and I have a long standing relationship. There is no one in this world to whom I am more connected, no one with whom I have more patterns, history, or baggage. Honestly, our interaction today would normally be something I would dream about having, to finally break old habits of interaction that bring me displeasure. But that wasn’t how it worked at all- it just happened. And it’s done. And I don’t even want to bother to try to replicate or understand how it happened because it just happened, without me at all.

The fact that this happened without me thinking about it, honestly, makes me feel like I need to just keep doing what I’m doing: being present, sitting zazen so I know myself and can feel my feelings (instead of thinking about them), not getting caught up in things when they happen, and not valuing one emotion over another- making peace with my feelings and my right to express them without fear of upsetting others.

I wish I could point to what created this interaction but I can’t. I guess I’m sharing it because it actually happened. Like, it’s proof that sitting facing a wall every morning,  walking/working/chanting… co-existing with a ton of other people in absolute silence, this stuff seems to do something that magically allows me to communicate my feelings to someone without fear, anger, or even thought.