It is most natural...

to take offence, feel hurt, or feel slighted, when people are rude or abrupt with us, especially if the person is someone we love, or care for, or admire. We feel this way too, when those who are hierarchically superior treat us badly or show disdain for our work, or are just plain rude. When strangers respond to our help in a rude or abrupt way, these same feelings well up inside the heart...and the only thing we can think of at that moment is to hit back-----and sometimes hit back hard - for the thought that is in our minds is: what have we done to deserve this response?

Let me share what I came across today -

Great kabbalists have taught that we should wait for at least three full days before we respond to a perceived misdeed.

Two things stare out from this sentence:

To wait for three days - an almost impossible thing to do, especially when the heart is welling up with all kinds of feelings, and the tongue is just waiting to lash out, and the brain is on overdrive putting all kinds of thoughts into our heads which are on the verge of coming out.....

The word perceived - which we, if we give a little thought to, will slowly but surely make us realize that it is actually perceived, because we do not know what was going on in the mind of the person who was nasty....we do not know what his/her mental/emotional condition was...and in fact we do not know even what our mental/emotional condition was like, to have received the spoken words as nasty or rude or uncalled for.

So, if we put the two together - that, what we understood to be rude was possibly a perception of ours, and  we must force ourselves to wait for three days before responding, it is bound to work well in our favor, and preserve our peace of mind.

Reactions only lead to grief.......but if we can train ourselves to walk away, and shift our focus to something else every time negative thoughts come up, for three days, just three days, we will feel the difference in ourselves.....

Surely we owe it to ourselves to preserve the peace and serenity of our minds.