Do You Have the Personality of a Bulldozer?

I was sitting on my school’s shuttle waiting to exit, when she blustered over me with all her stuff.  She unknowingly spilled her travel mug of dark, hot beverage on my Citizen of Humanity jeans.  She didn’t even notice.  I noticed.

I automatically called her a bulldozer in my heart, you know, the kind of people that plow you over and never have a clue.  The bulldozers are the ones to shove you out of their way in tight clothing isles at Old Navy when you’re pregnant and there isn’t anywhere for your 9 month pregnant belly to go.

Because miss-hot-beverage-spiller-without-knowing-it was a blazing bulldozer in my book (lights and beeping included), she got the secret stink eye — friendly eyes on the outside, squinty eyes on the inside.  Everything I learned about not being a stingy heart miser, all out the window.  Those bulldozer personality people, they press my buttons.  I have a hard time being a relational philanthropist with the bulldozers, and for some reason, I seem to find them everywhere.

I felt compelled to track her down to let her know how much of a bulldozer she was, plowing past me with her hot beverage, having no idea of what she did.  I hustled out of the shuttle to see that she already raced away.  “Like all bulldozers do”, I thought to myself, as I continued to note how oblivious she was.

But, wait!  She turned around to ask the shuttle driver a question.  Here was my opportunity to nail her.

“What are you drinking in your mug?”, I asked.

“Decaf black tea,” she interrupted, in a soft, sweet voice before I could finish, perked by my curiosity in her beverage choice.

I pointed to my jeans and continued to blurt, “Because it spilled on me when you were getting out and I need to know if it will stain.”  “Thanks for letting me know,” I said with my pretend smile.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said softly before she walked away.

Immediately, I could see how much I clobbered this opportunity to be heart generous.  Instead, I chose to be a heart scrooge and name called someone a bulldozer.

I seem to have a special lens to find all the bulldozer people in this world.  Maybe I’m seeing them everywhere because I’m so much of a bulldozer myself.  It takes one to know one.

Like the girl who unknowingly spilled black tea on my leg, I spill black tea on others with my words, and I often have no idea how hot my words are, let alone that they’ve left a mark on someone else.  I am quick to identify others as bulldozers, but slow to see the bulldozing bully that lives in my heart.

Where have you been an emotional bulldozer?  How can you be less of a bulldozer this week?

Share this!

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest