Tag Archives: getting along

Walk On By

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I woke up to a cloudy morning with raindrops on the windows. Looking out, I see that one of our tubs for catching runoffs from the garage roof is laying on its side. Well, that’s doing alot of good, I said to myself. The second thought was the season of what’s-her-name has started. I went out and righted it. The large rock to weigh it down was still in it. Must have been a mighty wind or a push. Our neighbour has dumped our rainwater into the back alley in the past. She complains it breeds mosquitoes. So we put a screen over the tubs. We try to empty the tubs as soon as possible before she does.

I have moved past getting angry and crazed by my neighbour’s antics. Being angry was not very effectual but very harmful to my physical and emotional health. It made me look like the one with the problem. Of course, I have tried to do the neighbourly thing – given her some of my plants, talking to her. It was an impossible task. She would not allow me to talk. Even the community police officer had a hard time getting in a word edge wise.

After many years of trying different ways, giving her no response is the best solution. Being human, I am not 100% foolproof. Sometimes I do lose it. I always pay for it. Then I learned some more on not reacting. I just have to keep on walking by with no eye contact, not saying hello. It’s not the neighbourly thing but a very wise thing to do.

HOW TO LIVE IN EQUANIMITY

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I’ve come to accept that I am a striver, always trying, to do better, to be more. I am a restless soul. In this life, I will always be busy trying and trying. I will rest later – in my next life.

It’s not for lack of trying that I don’t get along with people. I’m feeling I’ve failed miserably in that department. It seems that I’m always thinking, thinking and thinking what else can I do, how else can I be, to get along, to please people. I feel I’m always lacking, that it’s all my fault. I should have. I ought to. Why didn’t I?

I am exhausted by it all now – this getting along with people, this pleasing them. There seems to be no pleasing. What about me? Don’t I deserve some consideration after all I HAVE done. I felt incensed. I felt like screaming. I did scream yesterday. I felt caught between a rock and a hard place. I was damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Trapped! So often in life, trying to live in equanimity, turning the other cheek.

I was harvesting my carrots in the raised bed yesterday. I kept seeing those little spruce trees wherever I stepped. In frustration and anger I stomped on them. The neighbour had planted them in our yard. She claims that it’s part of her yard. She weeds the strip along her driveway on our side and said she will probably until she dies. She hates weeds. She also has the Weed Man spray herbicide along the strip – right where we have our vegetable bed.

I have called the Weed Man office to complain that it is actually our property they are spraying and we have food growing there. They have put the information on the file but I will follow up in spring. Trying to deal with the neighbour directly in the past have not successful. It only made things worse. She comes back at you in a different direction. What is best is no interaction whatsoever. Sometimes I forget and then there’s hell to pay. It gets exhausting sometimes. I’m trying to look at it in a different way.

Those little spruce trees will grow taller. They’ll be a fence and barrier against the snow she likes to shovel into our yard. Take a breath. There’s a silver lining in every problem. Take another breath. She is teaching me a lesson. There is no pleasing other people. I have to take care of myself, living up to my own personal code of conduct. Take another breath. I’m over the frustration and anger.