Have you ever noticed that one unkind act — even a small one — can wreck your day? Someone driving aggressively on the highway, maybe they shout at you or give you the finger. The other day, for example, I was biking home from the pharmacy. The sidewalks in our neighborhood are generally too narrow to accommodate more than one bike, so I leave those for the pedestrians. The collector that runs through our neighborhood is very wide, but doesn’t even have so much as a painted bike gutter (AKA a bike lane), so I ride in the street. As a bunch of people were passing me (on a double yellow line, because laws don’t apply where cyclists are involved), a guy in a truck rolls down his window to shout at me, Get out of the street!

Believe me, buddy, I’d love to. I don’t want to be riding in traffic any more than you want me riding in traffic. But I digress. This is the kind of thing I will stew about for hours — hence this blog post. It’s remarkable how easily a complete stranger can wreck my mood for a whole evening. Some of this is certainly a Me Problem. I know other, emotionally healthy, people let go of these things and move on. I’m working on it.

But also, it seems good to be aware of how much power you may have in the short term over the moods of people you encounter from day to day. A brief moment of anger or self-centeredness for you could ruin someone else’s afternoon. I know I think about this occasionally. In fact, another really good way for me to ruin my day is to act out in anger so that I spend a good chunk of the rest of my day regretting my behavior.

Recently, I’ve been running a little thought experiment when the urge to lash out at a driver (it’s usually a driver) comes over me. I say run a little thought experiment as though this was an exercise I created dispassionately, when in reality it is the product of my anxious brain catastrophising. Anyway, when I think about shouting at someone or giving them the finger, I consider what would happen if that person turned out to be a parent of one of my kid’s friends, or a teacher at his school. How would this angry interaction color the relationship I didn’t realize we were going to have? Maybe we already have a relationship and I just don’t know what their car looks like (again, it’s always drivers).

Because in truth, I would speak very differently to one of my kid’s friend’s parents than is my instinct in that moment of frustration and anger. For one thing, I would give them the benefit of the doubt, assume that it was a mistake. And while I wouldn’t pretend that it’s not dangerous to pass too closely (for example), I wouldn’t shout and call them names. Because that would color our relationship forever.

This thought experiment (catastrophising) works remarkably well for me because it is a very real possibility that one of these days, if I fly off the handle, I will discover that the person on the receiving end of my ire is someone I now have to get along with because my kid is bringing a lot of new people into our lives. Of course, you don’t need a kid for this to be true, but I find I’m a lot more sensitive to it now because I would hate for his friendship to be colored by the fact that I don’t get along with his friend’s parents. I am certain he’d pick up on that. Kids are pretty astute.

I don’t really have a point here. The moral of the story isn’t “be kind to strangers,” although that’s not a terrible idea. This is just something that’s been on my mind for the past few months, since my kid started kindergarten.