You participate in life, and you observe. You are the watcher who watches yourself.

When you are angry, you believe someone has perpetuated anger upon you, yet anger is a card you deal yourself.

The most prevalent anger is vanity. Anger arises from ego and says: “How dare they? They can’t say this or do this to me or overlook me or disdain me like this. I won’t let them get away with this.”

This anger comes from your lack of sense of self. You insist that others must give you what you do not give yourself. And so, when someone speaks amiss or acts amiss, you flare up and are sure that others have to retract their words or actions and turn their lack of regard of you onto themselves. You insist on this. “They can’t get away with this,” you say. “They can’t take me so lightly. I am a person. They had no right.”

Yet you were the offender of yourself, and now you are the arbitrator of the others who did not give you the homage you must feel you need so badly. You make a fool of your own self to right a perceived wrong. You make a fool of yourself and slip into a place of futile anger. You box with yourself in a mirror, and you are furious with the image you see. You like to think you are standing up for yourself when it is your ego that has perked up its ears. Ego whispers to you that you must defend yourself. “Retaliate,” anger says.

It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Offense is also in the eye of the offended.

First of all, you do not need the regard of another. Regard or lack of regard don’t mean much. Both are a dime a dozen. Both regard and disregard are illusory. Value yourself enough not to be caught up in that which does not truly concern you.

And so, a customer service representative, for instance, who doesn’t know you at all, gives you poor service and so the misrepresentative of service, in your eyes, becomes your enemy. What does their poor service have to do with you that you take affront? Because they don’t know better or bother to do better, what does that have to do with you who are only a voice on the telephone? That’s all the other is as well, a voice on the phone, someone sitting there and not doing a great job. Must you take it personally? Must you get up in arms? To what gain? Your anger does not show strength. It shows weakness. Anger is your weakness, not someone else’s. When someone else gives poor service, you do not have to give a poor return.

Shoddy service representatives, representing a company or representing themselves, are not the making or undoing of you. When you flare up in self-righteousness, are you representing Me at all? How well are you doing your job? How well are you representing Me?

Instead of lowering yourself, raise yourself. Instead of promulgating war, promulgate peace. You do not have to continue something that creates or continues strife. You are not lowering yourself to rise higher. Did you think you were?

You don’t have to continue on the phone with a customer service representative, nor do you have to hang up on them. You can get off.

I speak of customer service representatives because it is so easy to see that, truly, they have nothing to do with you. When it comes to those who are closer to you, the same is true, and yet it is harder to see. Nevertheless, others’ dissatisfaction is theirs, and yours is yours. Put down your fists, beloved.