Between Stimulus and Response is our Freedom

Peace on earth begins in the hearts and minds of each of us

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following act it should be fired.—Anton Chekhov

Chekhov was pointing to a principle of good play writing: Nothing that doesn’t have its place should be inserted into a good story.

We are not fictitious characters. What makes for a good story does not necessarily make for a good life.

I’ll have a pound of the Icelandic haddock, I said as I began my routine transaction at the fish counter of our local supermarket.

The clerk placed on the scale a piece weighing 0.82 pound. Usually, without asking, the clerk will try another piece. This time, the clerk looked at me expecting my approval. I responded saying Can you get it closer to a pound?

The next piece was 1.5 pounds. The clerk again expected my approval. Could you cut a piece off? I asked. Without offering another piece, he replied, I can’t cut the fish.  

I could have walked away and made alternative plans for dinner. I didn’t.

I looked to see that I was not holding up a line of customers. With obvious irritation, I said Others in this store routinely cut fish, so could you please get someone to cut the fish?

He curtly explained, I need to have at least half a pound after I cut the fish. Annoyed, I responded, the piece is a pound and a half; you’ll have what you need after you cut it. He cut the fish.

We both recovered our chill; the encounter didn’t escalate to a skit worthy of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Yet, I felt an emotional hangover.

I didn’t like how I had behaved. I had mentally condemned the fish clerk, and now I was mentally condemning myself for becoming irritated. I didn’t justify my peevish behavior as I told my wife of the encounter. Without justification, I could learn.

Everything that happens to you is your teacher. The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it.—Polly Berends  

That day I was willing to be pleasant only if I got what I wanted. I could have made the same requests without being irritable.

What you do comes from what you think. You cannot separate yourself from the truth by “giving” autonomy to behavior. —A Course in Miracles

In other words, my behavior just didn’t happen. The fish clerk was on the receiving end of something that was already under my skin.

Often irritation is caused by the tendency of the ego to want to find “gotchas.” A gotcha is when we spot a trivial mistake made by another and dump our psychological trash by calling them out. Those incidents may be small but notice how they cost you your peace of mind, not to mention the peace of mind of the person on the receiving end of your gotcha.

What is your purpose in finding a gotcha? Your purpose will always guide your thinking and behavior even when you are not fully aware of your purpose. That day at the fish counter, Chekhov’s pistol was hung on the wall when the two of us had different views about how close .82 was to a pound. But real life is not the same as fiction.

The “gun” went off in Act 2, but the next time it doesn’t have to. In fiction the gun going off may be essential to the plot. In our lives, it is good if it doesn’t; we can make life stranger than fiction in a good way. I could have disregarded Chekhov’s rule by making the clerk’s behavior irrelevant to my own behavior.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. — Anonymous (often misattributed to Viktor Frankl)

Our freedom is eroding by what Biden, Fauci and other politicians do. Yet let us not fail to see how we rob ourselves of our personal freedom; how we narrow our own world by our thinking.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.—Viktor Frankl

Peace on earth begins in the hearts and minds of each of us. In the smallest of encounters, we can choose to demonstrate goodwill.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!