Old Dog, New Tricks

It’s an old cliché, and one that doesn’t hold great validity. After all, I can use a computer, and mobile telephonic device, and have been known to go ‘contactless’ with abandon. Hell, I even order shopping on line!

However, when it comes to behaviour, and reacting to specific circumstances, there is definite room for improvement.

I thought I was fairly self-aware. I thought that I had searched through the response mechanisms for those ‘learnt’ attitudes that we don’t see most of the time because they are small, and ‘harmless’. I thought that I had de-programmed myself of the twitch that wasn’t mine, but was there as an unconscious learnt reaction.

This is not meant to sound calculating. I came to the realisation a while ago that, even if the conscious thought says one thing, learned auto-responses can linger.

But I thought I had got rid of them. I thought I was okay. Never perfect, far from it, but okay.

But recently an ‘auto-response’, developed to avoid one scenario, resulted in a very different outcome.

I had, and I suppose still have deep down, a very bad temper. Because I have been aware of this, it has remained watched, and monitored, and under control. And when I became aware of the potential for it to surface, I would walk away.

And that developed into my standard response to any conflict scenario, and mainly with people I care about. Because, the mind explained, if you leave the zone, then you will not get angry. Never mind who is right, wrong, or any version of grey in between.

So, there developed an arrogant assumption that I was being protective, by retaining control, and the whole process evolved into an abstract concept of peace retention.

But old dog has learned that this particular trick is the reverse. Because it closes the door on resolution, and claims the high ground.

And that is a shock. To realise that what I thought was a lesson learned long ago is not conciliatory but a retention of control. And it is also hard to decide, honestly, whether that was the intention all along.

I don’t think it was. I hope it wasn’t. But I can’t be sure.

I do know one thing. I don’t walk away any more. Not without an explanation. Not without clarity. Because that isn’t fair. And it isn’t me. Or not the me I want to be.

Lesson learned.