Difficult people and having no patience...

I have learned over the years that I have less patience with people.  If I know someone is really struggling, I tend to pull what patience I have and work harder.  However, my problem is with people who just refuse to get it or work for the answer.

In school, we are taught to do your own work, not to collaborate.  Why?  It teaches you self-reliance and teaches you important problem solving skills. As one of my favorite professors used to say:

If I do the debugging for you, who learns from it?  Me.  I just improves the debugging skills I already have.  For you, it does nothing because you did not try.

I suppose my frustration stems from too many people who just are not able to see the forest for the trees.  Yes, I have my times where I go through that, but I also struggle with a problem and provide the person whom I ask help for what I have done to debug an issue.  If it is simple resolution, I kick myself pretty hard for not figuring it out.  If it is not, I do not feel so bad.  :-)

However, I do not even see that sort of thing happening.  If there is a problem, rather than solve it, I get the issue and have to dig for the answers.  It might be more interesting if it were a different problem, but it is the same issue over and over.

I feel problem solving skills have a lot to do with understanding history and how it affects you.  Many people do not like history.  They find it boring.  The thing is, if you see something happening one time, if you remember it, you can prevent it from happening again.  Problem is, no one wants to remember what happened and just move on to something else. 

So, I know I have issues with difficult people.  I try to deal with them as best as I can, but man, some days, I have to ask God:  "Really?!"

Funny how today's message from God revolves around this subject matter:

On this day of your life, we believe God wants you to know ... that difficult people are very important, - they teach you tolerance and acceptance.

If all was going your way all the time, you would become a spoiled child, wouldn't everyone? Difficult people are just one of the ways God teaches us to expand beyond our egos and accept other perspectives on life.