Being the Bigger Person Is Hard Work

I salute those that can be the bigger person with glee, during a conflict or potential conflict. It takes a lot of inner strength to be the bigger person and do the right thing all the time.

If you’re like me, there are many times when you don’t feel like being the bigger person when someone tries/tests you.

It seems like some people’s entire purpose on this earth is to try us & get under our skin in any way they can. If they don’t succeed, It’s a silent victory for us. If they do succeed and we lash out at them, after we cool off from the explosion, we may feel remorse for taking that action on the person.

I’ve never understood the mindset certain people have by trying to push people’s buttons. It’s a dangerous game to try people — because we never know how someone will react when they feel they’re being disrespected.

It can be an everlasting struggle for us to be the bigger person — because there are times when we’re not interested in being the bigger person all the time. Because of the inner drive to win and defeat our opposition in battle. Plus it can feel like being the bigger person isn’t enough to achieve victory if the lesser person continues to be the lesser person.

So, we want to send a strong counter-attack against the person who wronged us to make them think twice before coming at us in a negative way.

There were times when taking the high road was easy for me.

Either because the potential fight didn’t seem worth it or because I felt like the threat was too dangerous to proceed in conflict.

There were also a lot of times when I didn’t want to be the bigger person.

I wanted to drop a counter-attack against those who express bad behavior towards me. But I did it anyway. It was hard though. It was tough to bite my tongue and keep that volcanic rage that wanted to come out and flow like a river.

It felt like I was fighting against a natural reaction I wanted to express at the time. Problem is that reaction will come out at some point. It could come weeks/months/years later. And hopefully, it doesn’t come out against people we care about, because that’s one of the worst feelings ever. Once we say or act out our reaction, we can’t take it back.

We may apologize or have a strong desire to make amends, but the impact has already been felt by the one who took the punishment. Being a human being is not an easy job, especially if you are an adult. It requires making tough decisions that can affect you or others in your circle.

Sometimes we want to keep the peace with those that want conflict. And other times, we want a war to get that fighting juice out of our system. We just want someone to get us that opportunity for war. I believe that’s where a lot of resentment we see in people we come across comes from.

Resentment for those in their past that tested them and they took the higher ground — but didn’t react how they really felt at the time. It could have been because of fear, the thought of others disapproving of their actions, or another reason.

It’s hard to let go of things we wish we could do over again in life. Sadly, it comes with the territory of learning in life.

Being the bigger person in a situation is hard these days — when so many people feel like they can come at people any kind of way without consequences and repercussions. Whether online or offline. It comes down to how we respond to such headaches when they come up.

Hopefully whatever choice we make will be the right choice.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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