My weekend started off great.
I (successfully) cooked James breakfast. I went to the gym and ran 5km.
I came back to the apartment and danced around.
Then the incident occurred.
++
When we moved to Hong Kong I planned to buy all new furniture to make our apartment feel more ‘homey.’
I did my research on lounges, coffee tables and dining suites and who were the best retailers.
I ordered the said furniture and was excited for its arrival, but when it arrived every piece was damaged.
I was devastated.
Three weeks later the replacement furniture arrived, also damaged.
To cut a very long and convoluted story short, the shop owner refused to replace the damaged furniture or give us our money back.
Unbelievable.
But what resulted was the most horrific altercation I have ever experienced.
Picture an irrational middle-aged Asian woman, dressed in all black, dripping in diamonds, screaming ferociously in my face….and boy, could she scream!
Don’t worry, to my surprise, I screamed back at her – repeatedly.
But I walked out of the store in absolute shock and then burst into tears.
James and I could barely speak for the remainder of the day. The entire experience was that upsetting.
For the rest of the weekend anger consumed me and I felt toxic.
How could someone be so irrational? How could she expect us to repeatedly accept damaged goods and be happy with that? We have spent good money and now we are stuck with furniture we dislike!
++
Resentment follows anger, which is a corrosive combination.
When anger builds it starts to eat away at you, from the inside out.
You feel heavy, and you look at everything through a jaded lens. You pick fights. You feel like crap and the world is against you.
On Sunday night, rather serendipitously, I found a quote by Buddha:
Put simply, would you rather be right or would you rather be happy?
I choose to be happy.
My intuition tells me there is no way the dragon lady of a shop owner will come around, and the thought of dealing with her and continuing the battle is pure exhausting.
When you meet anger with grace, the battle is over.
You stop hitting your head against a brick wall.
It’s not compromising. It’s a conscious decision for your higher good.
But when you let go of the need to be right, you feel lighter and a sense of freedom emerges.
By letting go of the anger you are rewarded by piece of mind.
I know it sounds all Zen-like, but it really is common sense.
I have made a conscious choice to drop the anger, upgrade my furniture and invest my energy into positive thoughts and interactions.
So would you rather be right or happy?
I now know which one I’d rather be!
Let me know in the comments if there was a time when you chose to be happy rather than right! We can compare war stories!
Love,
