How to Get on With Disagreeable People
SOONER or later, I suppose, it falls to the lot of all of us to live, for a longer or shorter period, with a disagreeable person. Not that they are really disagreeable in themselves, perhaps they may be even attractive and loveable to some people; but to us, on account of their temperament and tastes differing so widely from ours, they appear difficult to get on with. It is very important to learn the divine art of living with uncongenial people; for to be continually “rubbed the wrong way,” to daily meet with jars and friction, will slowly but surely wear away our very life. Our health and our spirit will gradually disappear, yes, and it is to be feared, alas! our grace also. Going through life, I have learned some valuable lessons that have helped me to bear patiently with disagreeable people, when it has been my lot to meet with them. The first is this: if you find some one trying and hard to live with, you may be almost certain that he also finds things about you that are irritating to him. I remember that when, as a child, I confided to a mutual friend how difficult I found it to get on with a companion, I was more than surprised when she quietly remarked, “She says that you are so very trying sometimes.” I had never dreamed that I had been in the least to blame! And as the years have rolled by since then, I have noticed again and again that, if there is friction, it is almost invariably felt on both sides. How often it has helped me to be patient, if some one has rubbed me the wrong way, to say to myself: “No doubt, although I am not conscious of doing or saying anything wrong, I am trying her as much as she is trying me.” Another useful lesson experience has taught me is, that, if persons are irritable and cross and difficult to please, very often the reason is because they are suffering (all unknown perhaps to those around them) in mind or body; and, if we only knew all their pain, we should feel it was pity instead of blame they deserved. A third lesson I have learned in some measure is, if people are disagreeable, to make allowances for their natural disposition, and not to expect the same sympathy and consideration from those who are not naturally sensitive and tender-hearted, as from those who are. The former can not be expected to know what a little thing will hurt the latter. I have noticed on different occasions, when some one who had been born, as it were, without sympathy or tact, said what seemed to be an unpleasant or cutting thing, it was not that he meant to be unkind or to wound; it was simply because he had the misfortune to have a bad manner and to possess no natural tact. If we are different from such, let us thank God for it, and say to ourselves: “Who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?” Mrs. Charles has beautifully expressed what I am trying to say when she wrote: “How many of our resentments would die out by simply realizing that the deeds or words or omissions which wound us were not meant, or that, if indeed they were meant, they arose from a difference of character, or a want of imagination, which prevented the perception of how they would pain!” But though the three lessons we have mentioned are very useful and precious, they do not go deep enough. If we are to get to the root of the matter, we must learn a more spiritual truth; namely, that our relations with our fellow men largely depend upon our relations with God, that we can only truly keep in touch with those we live with by keeping in touch with God. This is the most important fact for us to learn, that we keep right with men when we keep right with God. How searching are Pastor Stockmayer’s words: “When nothing comes between us and God, there will be nothing coming between us and our brethren.” The smallest friction with our friend, our neighbor, or our fellow worker, ought to be an alarm call to awaken us to the fact that all is not right between our soul and God. If we are finding it difficult to “let our yieldingness be known unto all men,” the reason is that we are not sufficiently yielded to God. One who has had large and long experience in dealing with Christian workers says: “The soul that is filled with the Holy Ghost is adjustable both to God and man. The easiest people to get along with are those most filled with God.” If, then, we have not learned to get on with disagreeable people, and can not yet bear and forbear, we may question if we know what it is to be filled with the Spirit.—The Life of Faith.