Kinder and gentler

September 15, 2013

We had just moved to Phoenix from Mesa so it was 1956. We lived just off 32st and Portland Street. We had been there for a few months and everything was going well. My brother had to take a bus to school and I believe it was a Phoenix City public transportation bus. One afternoon an irate woman came to the door and told mother that my brother Glenn had been impertinent and had caused her to be very upset. I came to the door with mother and started shouting at the lady telling her that my brother was a good guy and that she had better mind her manners. For those of you who knew mother, this was far from her comfort zone. All she could do was to apologize for her son’s behavior on the bus and then apologize for my unruly outburst.

Over the next several decades right up to the present I keep repeating that mistake. I always consider myself a calm and logical person, but just let me get in an awkward situation – right or wrong – and I will in many cases lash out at those at whom kinder, gentler verbiage and tone would be better received and result in positive results instead of embarrassing negative reactions. When President Bush 41 came to the Presidency he declared that he wanted the world to be kinder and gentler. It wasn’t of course, and we still rant and rave at each other; nation against nation, ethnicity against ethnicity, gender against gender, and political leaning against political leaning. The Kingston Trio song sharing, “the French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Dutch, and I don’t like anybody very much,” pretty well reflect the tone of our collective voices.

I am really talking to an audience of one today. I want to stop that nonsense. I have been involved in another rant of the worst kind over the past few months. Briefly, I got sick in March, told my real estate broker I didn’t want to have my license active when I was ill (thinking I was having a series of mini strokes) and wanted to put my license on inactive status. He agreed. In May I had resolved all of the mysteries about my health and found that I had a bout of vertigo and wanted to return my license to active status and he, again professionally agreed. I went down to the Utah County Association of Real Estate, told them I had reactivated my license and needed one core class required to validate my license for the next two years. I was told that I had to pay $20 dollars for the class because I wouldn’t be an active member of UCAR until I paid the reinstatement fee of $350 dollars.

Perhaps I should have just paid the money and gone on with life. Instead I chose to go into one of my infantile rants, ask for time on the next board agenda, and generally make myself look silly. Was I right? Absolutely! Should I have been kinder and gentler and used my rational side to make my case? Sure! The real question; however, is when I am provoked and jabbed in the side with a wrong, do I turn the other cheek, or do I become a nasty example of anger on a stick. My goal is to share this part of my underbelly so it will serve as a warning to me to avoid such nonsense in the future. It solves nothing and only exacerbates the problem. It makes it about the feelings of people and the challenge of protecting their turf.

Thanks for reading. God bless each of us as we wander through life. May we understand the need each of us has to feel honorable and worthy and the reaction we achieve when we defile someone else by castigating their person, office, or integrity!

Duane Jacobs, Grandfather, father, brother, uncle, cousin, friend, and fellow citizen of the United States