On Being Offended

When I was in college I ran a marathon. It was a great experience for me, I was glad I did it. Anyone who has ran a marathon or similar race knows they take as much mental strength as they do physical. I felt really good the first part of my race, the first 13 or 14 miles were easy for me. The next few after that I really had to start focusing and concentrating on pounding out each mile. Around mile 20 was the toughest part of the race for me. I hadn’t ran further than 18 miles in any of my training runs, and this was where the mental part of my race kicked in. It was hard, but I was determined to not just finish, but do it in good time. (I did end up finishing in just over four hours).

The last few miles of the race were lined with hundreds of spectators, many of them there to cheer on people they knew who were running. As I ran by, many of them would yell out my race number, or cheer me on, or say good job. But as I got nearer and nearer the finish line there was one particular phrase I kept hearing the most, “It’s just around the corner.” The last few miles of my marathon snaked through different streets of the city we were running in, there were lots of corners to turn during those miles, and the finish line was not just around most of those corners. So by the fourth or fifth time I heard this phrase, I was really annoyed. I wanted to look at the person yelling it out and say, ‘Stop saying that! It isn’t helpful!” I’m not sure why I was so annoyed in that moment with well-meaning race spectators, the fact that my body and mind were pretty much spent probably had something to do with it. This was the toughest part of my race, the hardest part for me to conquer. So getting annoyed was a little easier to do while my body was being tested to its limits.

After I had finished running my race, after crossing the finish line, feeling proud of my time, and downing some Gatorade, I started to think about those annoying feelings, and I felt a little silly. Here were these people I didn’t really know or recognize, and yet they still chose to cheer me on. They could have sat there and not said anything, or worse there could have been no one there at all. How much more difficult would those last few miles have been with empty streets? I decided I was more thankful for those people than I was annoyed by them, even though they didn’t say exactly what I needed to hear in the moment. They were there, they were cheering, and they made my race easier and more exciting to finish.

I want to take this analogy and apply it to something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, but I just wasn’t sure how to do it. There have been many good things written about not giving offense, and I am grateful for that. Learning how to be kind, to not gossip or speak ill of others, to not be rude or inconsiderate…those are all skills I have been working on my whole life, and also things I try every day to teach my children. It is important and I hope people never forget how important it is. But on the other side of not giving offense, is choosing not to take offense…and personally I think that is just as important a skill to master.

We have all been offended at one time or another by something someone said or did, in the same way I was annoyed with the words of those spectators. It is a fairly common part of the human experience. And while we can’t control what people say or how they choose to talk to us or about us, we can choose how we respond.

I think many times when offense is given to someone, it was not meant or intended to be that way. Those cheers of “It’s just around the corner” were meant to help me on my way, not hinder it. While there are people in the world who are purposely mean-spirited, revengeful, or take joy in hurting others, call me Pollyanna, but I think those people are the exception rather than the rule. I personally can’t say I have ever met someone who is truly like that. It takes a lot of effort and energy to be mean to someone in that way. But it takes hardly any at all to say something tactless or to just say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Every one of us has done it.

That’s why I think it’s so important to not take offense. To give people the benefit of the doubt. There are days a lot of us are wrapped up in our lives, or drained of energy, or focusing all of our attentions on a problem that we face, and in those moments we might forget to look outside of ourselves or fail to say the right thing. I’m not saying that is how we should always be, but we are imperfect human beings and it happens. Many of us do care, and we wished we had said the right thing.

As I watch the people around me running the hardest parts of their races, I realize that many times they are running races I haven’t personally experienced or fully understand. I struggle with what to say or how to say it, I worry if what I’m saying as a spectator to cheer them on is really helping them, or instead really bugging them, or worse even hurtful to them. I know I have yelled out my own version of “It’s just around the corner!” and given offense when it wasn’t intended.

I know many people have seen me running my own race of life or fighting my own demons and have tried to say the right thing, but sometimes fell short (my husband included). But instead of feelings of anger or annoyance or hurt, I am trying to look back and reflect, just like I did at the end of my marathon. To realize many times others are trying to show concern or kindness, they are trying to be helpful.

I hope I can choose to not take offense. I hope I can remember to feel grateful for all the many spectators in my race of life, imperfections and flaws included. Sometimes they might cheer me on in the wrong way or say something that isn’t helpful, but ultimately they are still cheering me on. And even with the dumb things they might sometimes say, this race would be infinitely harder to run without each one of them there.

“Charity is having patience with someone who has let us down. It is resisting the impulse to become offended easily. It is accepting weaknesses and shortcomings. It is accepting people as they truly are. It is looking beyond physical appearances to attributes that will not dim through time. It is resisting the impulse to categorize others.”     --Thomas S. Monson, “Charity Never Faileth”