Why Learn to Work With Difficult People
Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations , Lifehacker’s weekly dive into the pool of stoic wisdom and how you can use its waters to meditate and improve your life.
This week’s entry was written by Marcus Aurelius as he fought the Germanic Quadi tribe in what is now Slovakia on the Gran (Hron) River :
In the morning, first of all, tell yourself: today I will meet people who interfere, are ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, spiteful, asocial. All this struck them because of their ignorance of true good and evil. But I saw that the nature of good is what is right and the nature of evil is what is wrong; and I thought that the nature of the criminal himself was akin to my own — not a blood or seed relationship, but a sharing of the same mind, the same fragment of divinity. Therefore, none of them can harm me, because no one will infect me with their evil. I also cannot be angry with or hate my relative. We were born to cooperate, like legs, like hands, like eyelids, like rows of upper and lower teeth. Thus, opposition to each other is contrary to nature, and anger or rejection is opposition.
– Marcus Aurelius, Reflections 2.1.
What does it mean
You will encounter cruel, annoying people whom you hate at different times in your life. Aurelius defines these types of people as “evil,” but what he really means is that they are ignorant or lacking in certain knowledge. So, the difficult people you may encounter on a day-to-day basis are simply those who are not aware of the knowledge that you possess. They don’t know what you know, so they are bad, wrong, or “evil” to you. But you also don’t know everything they know, and you can see them from their point of view in the same way .
But the main lesson of this passage is this:
… None of them can harm me, because no one will infect me with their evil. I also cannot be angry with or hate my relative. We were born to cooperate, like legs, like hands, like eyelids, like rows of upper and lower teeth. Thus, opposition to each other is contrary to nature, and anger or rejection is opposition.
These “intruders, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, asocial” people cannot harm your inner spirit – only you can do it to yourself, allowing them to change your perception. And they shouldn’t change the direction of your own ethical compass points without giving you the knowledge you need to do so.
No matter how annoying and troublesome someone is, that is (usually) not their intention and you shouldn’t confront them. Don’t get angry, upset, or push them away. Instead, come to terms with your differences and strive to cooperate as best you can. We, as a species, had to work together, overcoming all obstacles.
What to take from there
As you go through your workday, interact with others on social media, scroll through Facebook and Twitter feeds, remind yourself that most of the people who make you shudder with rage are not weapons designed to kill you. They are just people with a different outlook on life. And even if some of them haters hate weapons, do not forget that you can wear invincible armor. You can allow their attacks to elude your inner spirit, mind, consciousness, soul, or whatever you choose to call your operating system. Their words cannot infect you until you let them in.
Finally, know that collaboration is the key to true progress. The more you get angry at these seemingly ignorant people you deal with every day, and the more distance you try to put between yourself and them, the more difficult it will be for you to make progress in the long run. Stop attacking, let go of your ego, know that nothing can hurt your spirit, and decide to work together. Find a compromise. Easier said than done, no doubt. But you can endure and thus set an example for others to follow.