"God don't like ugly." That probably was some of the best advice I ever got in the middle of a crisis. I hadn't heard the phrase is a long time. I remember Mother or my grandmother or one of my aunts using so those same words on me when I was much younger. Over the years, moving around from Eastern Kentucky to Lexington to Akron to Evansville to Cincinnati, I had lost some of my Appalachian accent and with it some of my colorful phraseology. Or I had just replaced it with something more cosmopolitan - "God don't like ugly" had become "karma is a bitch." But it made much more sense to pull from my history in this situation.
It had been a rough few weeks at work with a co-worker who chose, let's just say, to take the low road in trying to work through personal conflicts. He wanted everything his way and wanted everyone else on board with his way of seeing things. If you didn't agree with him 100 percent, you may as well get ready for the wrath. Unfortunately, I was the target and left to fend for myself - even abandoned by persons that I thought would have my back. People who initially said I was out of line for holding him accountable have eventually come to see that my methods and message were all about responsibility and living up to your own expectations. Throughout the storm, I held my head up high and lived by the code instilled in me by my parents, family, and ancesters - simply put, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." When he or another co-worker would tell me that my actions or words "seemed" hurtful or out-of-line, I would apologize directly to him for the way it made him feel. When he was out of line, he would refuse to apologize, opting instead to say that he would apologize to everyone else in the company who had witnessed his outburst - except me.
I could have fallen into the muck and mire - but it would have drained me - emotionally, physically, spiritually. I chose to buckle down into what I truly believe and look inside. What can I do better? How can I improve? How can I help this person? I really thought about what I wanted to achieve in my life - what I wanted people to know about me. So that's what has brought me back to this blog and sharing what I learned. I can look back after the storm (although small rumblings still happen) and understand better what I was doing - how I was acting the way I had been taught as a child. So when this other person had many "bad luck" instances at work, it wasn't me that noticed and commented - it was a co-worker who had remained quiet during everything. She just made the side comment to another co-worker when the fifth or sixth instance of karma comeback showed and I was moving forward and staying positive.
"God don't like ugly," she said. She said it to a co-worker who initially had confronted me and taken actions that conveyed the feeling to me that everything was my fault - and I was the only one who needed to change. That same co-worker told me what was said and how it made her realize just what had transpired over the past few weeks. Those words opened her eyes to how I had handled the aftermath compared to how this other person handled it - and the high road was much preferred. Yes, there were lots of tears and we still work through things every day, because some people just need time to "grow up" - even after their 35th birthday. But going forward, anytime I am faced with something that just might ignite the short fuse on my temper, I remember those words my co-worker said, but I remember them the many times I heard them land my ears as a child in the beautiful, knowledgeable voices of my foremothers..."Child, God don't like ugly."
