Crabby People

A short while back I had the opportunity--or perhaps I should call it "misfortune"--to spend some time with a couple of crabby people.  Lest you should rightly call me "self-righteous,"  I will admit here that I too can be crabby at times, but I don't make it a habit.  Some people do.  I can go all the way back to my childhood and give you the names of every one of my relatives who belong to that genre', because I noticed there is this about them: they were not much fun to be around.  I didn't like them, for that reason.  They depressed me.  So I avoided them as much as I could.  Which wasn't often.  When they're your relatives and your parents take you along to family gatherings, it's pretty hard to avoid them.  As an adult, you can kindly say no to their invitations. 

Which brings me to my point:  Are they crabby because they can't help being crabby or because they don't want to?  I suspect the ones I know are the latter.  It's possible they haven't lived a very happy life, and that prompts my compassion.  But when I look back at my crabby relatives, I see spouses of the crabby who aren't crabby at all.  This seems to lend credence to my belief that they just like to argue and bicker with others.  They must either get some kind of delight from being crabby, or they don't care enough about others to notice how their behavior affects them.  

So what do we crabby-dislikers (How's that for a newly manufactured word?) do about the crabbies?  Avoid them?  Ignore them"  Tolerate them?  The one I like best is to pray for them.  As someone who has lived with chronic pain for forty-plus years, I could easily have joined them, and at times I do for a short time, but I choose not to live that way.  Which tells me people can choose.  If they choose to live differently, they can.  And I suspect that, if they do, if they decide to change from chronically crabby to chronically thoughtful and self-giving people, they will find greater happiness for themselves.  

Have a happy, crabby-free day,

Margaret