When you are rude or condescending you are really telling that person: “you don’t matter to me, I don’t care how you feel and I certainly don’t want a relationship with you.”
Rudeness begets separation, a distinction between me and you; it is a dividing line that says we are separate with no hope of being anything else.
If you are foolish enough to believe that you are superior and therefore *pay no price* for your rude behavior, be warned, everyone pays a price for rude behavior. Rude behavior can be compared to a loose cannon on a ship on a stormy sea, once it is loosened, there is no way to tell how much damage the big, ugly, heavy cannon will do by rolling uncontrollably around the deck of the ship, up to and including sinking the ship or killing sailors.
If you are rude because you are angry, then you have allowed your anger to run away with you. Perhaps you believe that mistakes should be punished ruthlessly, and perhaps that is the way you live. Can you say then, that your traffic ticket should be charged to you at the highest possible rate? When you make a mistake do you punish yourself ruthlessly as you would do others? Of course not.
If any of your relationships include careless behavior that includes rudeness, condescension and a general lack of respect, then you will not enjoy that relationship to the fullest extent possible. The person who takes the brunt of the bad behavior will dislike you, resent you or dismiss you. No matter that the person may act differently than that. You cannot easily rid yourself of bad feelings evoked by someone who is disrespectful of you. So you must be aware that you foster a difficult environment.
Perhaps you are the boss, or in some other way economically dominant of those people that you would scorn and disrespect. Perhaps you believe that your position gives you the right to demand compliance from others. Of course, justice is a human construct, so you may never see justice. You may never realize what you have missed either. You may not know what kind of relationship is available to humans who are loving, giving and kind.
We are not a society that prides itself in honesty. We lie profusely and often. You may never find out what others think of you because your behavior is ugly and mean. You might end up going to your grave thinking that you were a “good manager” or “wealthy” or “successful”.
And that is truly what we would call an unconscious life.
