爱华网
系列专题：《点亮生活的智慧：人生之钥》
Months later, when I next met the author, he was still going on about the two of us setting off in the rib. Annoyed, I challenged him: “What was so strange about that?” He smiled deprecatingly. “It’s just that I have a problem with boats. A kind of phobia. I wouldn’t get into one of those rubber dinghies if my life depended on it.” And I noted, yet again, how easy it is to view things purely out of your own perspective, overlooking the fact that the other person is doing eactly the same. No matter how placid and peaceful you are, it will occasionally happen that people you have no reason to dislike turn out to be your enemy. Go out of their way to spite and slander, sabotage your best efforts; injure where it hurts most. Like any decent person, you will react to such unexplained hostility by searching deep into your memory to find the underlying reason. What could you have done to provoke such antagonism? Stepped on a tender toe? Missed an important message? You’ll be anxious to put things right. That won’t be easy, however, if the crime of which you’re guilty is, simply, to be yourself: something you’d be at pains to alter. There are people who will detest you for the way you look, or talk, or smile. Nothing to do with unpleasant characteristics, wrongdoings or shortcomings. Usually it is your very best qualities that are causing the annoyance. People of the kind who take offence where no offence is meant also tend to cultivate hatred of anyone better adjusted. They’ll never forgive you and they’ll see to it that you’re punished. When you next have a run-in with one of these, don’t let it upset you. Just run as fast as you can, taking care to remind yourself that you’re not the one with a problem.
