So Long, Chester Wheeler

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

“People think complaining about a bad thing will make them feel better. But it just stokes it. It keeps it alive. It’s like feeding it.

I got that when a person is rude and abusive to me, it’s not about me at all. They can say something terrible to me or about me, but they’re revealing themselves, not me. It has nothing to do with me. They’re just showing me the landscape on the inside of themselves as they project it out onto somebody else.