‘No Offense’... ‘Don’t Worry, None Taken!’

“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”

~Abraham Lincoln.

‘No offense,’ said Jaden, completing his rebuttal, to which Sam said bluntly in return, ‘None taken.’ We all know there’s ordinarily more to this than meets the eye; even both these guys know deeper down it’s not all beer and skittles after this little dispute.

The trouble with little disputes and many of them is they wear down our resolve; our ‘hurt museums’ grow and swell, threatening to break out at the least desired moment. Our stores of emotional baggage cram the closet and there’s suddenly little room to move.

If there’s anything we’ve grown too accustomed to in life it’s dishing out offenses and not taking them well. Both must be reduced if we’re to come close to reaching our relational goals.

If only we realised that most of the time people aren’t even thinking that much about us in any event, we’d carry less of our own hurts as they buzz incessantly through and over our minds.

The 16^th U.S. President nails probably the golden rule (phrased somewhat differently than the actual “Golden Rule”) of all intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. If only we had the courage to absorb all our hurts and the prudence and care not to issue them.

Surely we can only get this somewhere near right when we’re thinking of other people more than ourselves—or at least if we’re only thinking of ourselves in the context of others and our initiatives and reactions with them.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.