WHY ARE PEOPLE MEAN?

Random surfing on Google yielded this...Martha Beck is a writer and has been on the Oprah Winfrey show, and all the gyan is courtesy Oprah's site..

WHY ARE PEOPLE MEAN?
By Martha Beck

Someone insults you (and your little dog, too). You can retaliate, whimper—or exercise your own vast power. Martha Beck shows you how to rewrite your own character.

Why Are People Mean?
The first time I saw a T-shirt that said "mean people suck," I thought, Now, there is a heartfelt sentiment, succinctly expressed. I only wished I'd been the author. I mention this because recently I've encountered several mean people, and I've had to remind myself that the concept of authorship is key to surviving these experiences.

I don't know about you, but my favorite ways of reacting to mean people are (1) getting mean right back or (2) lying down quietly to display the word welcome! written where my spine used to be. Annoyingly, my job constantly reminds me that there's a more responsible and effective way to live. That's how it is for us authors. I say "us" because you're an author, too. Not all of us write for publication, but every living person has the power of authorship when it comes to composing our lives. Meanness emerges when we believe that we have no such power, that we're passive receptors of life's vagaries. Inner peace follows when we begin responding to cruelty—our own and other people's—with the authority we've possessed all along.

Why are people mean? Here's the short answer: They're hurt. Here's the long answer: They're really hurt. At some point, somebody—their parents, their lovers, Lady Luck—did them dirty. They were crushed. And they're still afraid the pain will never stop, or that it will happen again.

There. I've just described every single person living on planet Earth.

The fact is that we've all been hurt, and we're all wounded, but not all of us are mean. Why not? Because some people realize that their history of suffering can be a hero's saga rather than a victim's whine, depending on how they "write" it. The moment we begin tolerating meanness, in ourselves or others, we are using our authorial power in the service of wrongdoing. We have both the capacity and the obligation to do better.