When in a discussion, often which could be defined as an argument, I have held back the last few years. There was a time when in arguing or even in talking with someone who wanted to really "give it to me", I would not hold back. Ultimately winning the argument/discussion and being a total jerk in the process. But I won and that was all that mattered.
Since I have grown in my faith, those same instances come up and I feel myself holding back. For many reasons. My faith and the example I try to live by which is the common decency not to be that way to another human being. But as I get pushed and pushed, I feel that old me surfacing. I say things I shouldn't because I know things I wish I didn't. Plus, to be real honest, if you don't feel like your hands are tied behind your back, it's real easy for me to put people "in their place".
It is so easy that when others feel they can fight back and say something they believe to be a "winner", I can go even further. If you don't have that common decency to hold back, you can be ruthless, but I have found that I don't want to be that person, ever. It is only when I am continually attacked or you want to win the final argument that the words form in my brain and are on the tip of my tongue, but I don't use them...sometimes. Sometimes because the insufficient human in me still rears its ugly head (I do apologize now which I would have never done in the past).
It is much easier to hold back if I drop out. If I don't discuss anything with anybody having no opinion or I do not compete or coach it is easier to not take so many arrows, but what kind of life is that? I just keep praying for a thicker skin, the ability to smile it off, move forward, leaving the unhappy person behind as they continue to shout angry diatribes into the vastness of emptiness (where did that come from?).
