Patience in the eye of discomfort

I had an interesting experience at work the other day. There was a ping pong tournament going on to raise money for charity and so I thought, why not give it a try - it had been years since I last played ping pong, and I usually like playing any racket based sport.

I did feel a bit nervous walking over to the ping pong tables. It had been a long time since I had competed in anything that required me to play against an opponent. So here I am warming up, feeling out my strokes, the people around me are actually quite good.

The first match, had me playing another girl. Right off the bat, during practice, she made a comment about me not seeding myself right. I was confused because my understanding was that every team had a variety of players, and seeing the other 2 players in the group (we were 4 in our group) it definitely seemed like we all had a varied level of play. Never the less this lady talked with so much conviction that I felt she knew something I didn’t.

So we start playing the match - best of 5 sets, first to 11 with a change every 2 serves. In to the first set, I noticed that my opponent wasn’t really engaged. She was losing interest, and it got bad , very quickly - to the point that she didn’t even hit any strokes anymore. All I could think was, wow is this awkward or what ? but the whole time I thought to myself - it is ok, we all are at different points in our lives, and just because she is behaving this way didn’t mean that I needed to react to her behavior. So I continued to smile and have a good time even though it was so obvious that she wasn’t having such a good time. We finished the match and I went on to play the next player, while she played the same opponents as well and by the time the day was over, she seemed like she was in better spirits and she actually talked to me, which definitely made me feel better about the whole situation.

The next day , I was in a meeting in my office and I saw a call come in from some one I didn’t recognize. So I decided to pick up the call just in case it was an emergency. It was her again, and this time she apologized for her behavior. She noted that it was really a match that was being played for fun and she recognized that she probably needed to get better at her game. She also appreciated my kindness towards her in the situation.

I must admit, I was really shocked that she called. But I was really happy that she did. I think, the situation at the tournament, had left a bitter taste in my mouth, and her calling almost made me believe in the goodness of humanity again. We all have moments in our lives where we behave in a way that was probably inappropriate. We may also hurt our loved ones unknowingly. But we all have a choice to go back and correct the situation, without allowing our egos to get in the way. Sometimes it is even more awkward going back and correcting something, while we silently hope that it gets brushed under the carpet. I have recognized that it is always best to own up to our mistakes and apologize as promptly as possible because it really does make a difference to the person on the receiving end.

And if we are the people who have been on the receiving end of unfair behavior, it is best to not react. In fact, I believe the fact that I never wiped the smile off my face the whole time, gave her the ability to approach me later to apologize. Most of my life I have worked on my approachability, when I was younger people always told me I didn’t seem very approachable. I think it was because I didn’t smile as much. I also tended to be a lot more serious and my face almost always had a very serious expression on it. Today, that isn’t the case any more.

I also recognized that her behavior, even though it made me feel uncomfortable, it didn’t stress me out. And I recognized that all of the work that I have been doing through breathing and the like has definitely helped with handling these issues with a lot more patience than I ever have in the past.

So bottom line, no matter how bad the situation, you can ALWAYS breathe through it.