WEB: Why Attack? [was Revisit number forty two hundred]

[Al Boss]

"It's not personal."

People always say that. It's almost never the truth. What they mean is,
"It's not personal to me." 

I got hit by a car a couple years ago. Neither the car nor the driver
meant anything personal by it. It wasn't directed at me; my role as a
bicyclist just conflicted with their role as a motor vehicle. It felt
pretty personal to me, though.

I used to work in an organization where warring managers used to play a
version of org-chart chess, using their respective staffs as sacrificial
pawns. It wasn't personal to those managers; they were scarcely aware of
who we even were. That fact made it no less personal to the piles of
emotional corpses of all those people who got screwed.

It wasn't personal to the purchaser of a Big Mac, but it sure was
personal to the cow.

We all mean well, we call care about SCN, we're all passionate and
involved or we wouldn't be having this conversation. And, we're not as
awful as the examples I used above. And none of that matters when you're
the one who's hurt, or who's dragged down in front of your friends and
peers.

Consider the consequences of what you do when you interact with other
people. It's generally personal to the individual on the receiving end.

Al
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