A Self-Analytical Moment: Other People and the Weather

From now on I'm going to start treating other people like the weather. How come I haven't been doing this all my life?

Some days there are severe thunderstorms. Do I turn inward and wonder why the sky hates me, what I've done to make it so senselessly cruel to me? No, because I understand that the weather results from a combination of atmospheric events far beyond my control. So why, when a person is being irrationally cruel to me, do I take it upon myself to wonder what I could have done to make them be kind to me instead? When there's a severe storm, I keep tabs on the radar just so I'll know if I need to prepare for a tornado, but otherwise, I try to ignore it and get on with my day or night. I distract myself with pleasant things. I would like to do this when faced with irrationally cruel people as well.

I'm a bit of a shut-in. (That might be a bit of an understatement. (So was that.)) Why do I shut out everyone but my immediate family just because a few dozen people have been mean to me? I skip my walk some days if it's too cold or if the wind is unusually hot and dusty, but then when the weather is fine again, I go out once more and enjoy it. Why haven't I been able to do this with people? Why did I assume that if forty-nine people in a row were horrible, the fiftieth must be horrible too? The fiftieth person could have been 68 degrees Fahrenheit and partly cloudy with breezes from the south at 15 mph. I would like to be ready for those people when they arrive in my life, rather than assuming they don't exist.

Often, an individual will have all sorts of weather in his personality, frosty one day, balmy the next. I would like to learn to accept people who are changeable instead of writing them off on their bad days and then not being around to experience their good ones. Is there some way to "carry a light jacket" into social situations? I would like to practice being prepared for unpleasant interactions with otherwise pleasant people.

These are things I would like to try.