Negative Energy

Sometimes I feel sorry for the people in the world who only have negative energy to share. Well, maybe they have positive energy, but it only seems like they want to share their negative sphere.

I pulled into a parking spot on the street behind our dojang this evening and the man playing hockey with his son on the other side of the road began to castigate me for getting too close to his bumper. I understand why it looked like I did, but I was actually quite far from it. What seemed to make things worse was the fact that I was wearing a hoodie with our club logo on it. That really upset him, as he seems to feel wronged by the increased numbers of cars that park on his street now that the dojang is next door. We've been there for almost three years, but still he holds onto his resentment and wants to lash out whenever he can. I felt sorry for him, and said I was sorry for the trouble he felt we had caused him, but he didn't want to hear it.

I can almost understand where he is coming from. We have disrupted his life, and he needs to express that frustration. Unfortunately, he has never tried to figure out a positive way of dealing with it. Hopefully he doesn't feel the need to take his hockey stick to my car the next time he sees it.

It is always easy to feel hurt, and anger and fear at the unknown, or at changes that we feel forced into. But most of the time, all that is required is for us to change our perspective on the event and we can then try and put positive energy behind it.

Maybe I will figure out something that we can do for the man to help him release these negative feelings. Most likely though, I will choose to ignore his negative waves. Who wants to live like that?