Letting others disturb me

I mentioned a while ago how during one night under the influence of lack of sleep and alcohol I had a bit of a conflict with an Australian traveller. I think I mentioned that it worried me a little that this person was able to get to me and I put the whole thing down to a mixture of chemicals in my brain that decided this person was worth reacting to. Now it’s of no news to me that I have something in my brain that reacts to bullish and ignorant behaviour and it does concern me how I react to these behaviours. For instance during my wonderful time on Phillip Island which I spent mostly alone I was sat in the kitchen eating dinner and some people in the corner who were having rather a loud conversation. I didn’t have to listen to it I could hear it clearly and there was one voice in particular I could hear more than others. My guess is the guy was from Leeds or thereabouts, he had that sort of accent and he was playing cards with some other people in the hostel.

He was obviously drunk or had been drinking and very full of himself, he definitely like the sound of his own voice a lot because he used it. Humble was out the window with this guy and I could hear him full on bullying a girl (who I think was German) into his way of thinking. His whole reason for bullying her is that for quite a while now he had spent his time backpacking and hitching around Western Australia and declared it to be the best place to be. Okay fair enough your entitled to your opinion but what annoyed me is that he was trying to force his opinion onto others. The girl in question had obviously not visited Western Australia and probably (like myself) had only ever planned to do the east. But the guy was fervent about his pursuit to get her into the west, he offered her to go with him back to the west because he claimed that the whole of the East is “shit”, a sweeping statement which he liked to repeat as often as possible.

“The East is shit, West is the best. – Hostel numpty”

As I have stated I was not involved in this conversation but something inside me wanted to pull this guy to one side and tell him that he was being a dick and that it was his opinion that the West is best and not a fact. Of course I said nothing I just removed myself from the area as quickly as I could just so that I did not have to hear his voice anymore which by now I was beginning to hate. Too loud, too much, used too often. Even in a different room I could still hear his voice and I resorted to music to drown him out. What was worse was that this guy was staying in my room and I was more than prepared to have a go at him if he decided to come to bed and make a huge noise, sadly he didn’t and I slept.

By the next morning after still having no interaction with this guy he was still in my mind. I wanted him to start a conversation with me just so that I could put him in his place, it was now me with the problem, like I had taken his ignorance and turned it into anger. I left that morning for a long walk not only to clear my head of this guy but get some sight seeing done. For some reason my brain turned over and over situations in my head where I could find a way to make this guy realise his ignorance. In my head I visualised scenarios of him talking to me the way he was talking to the girl and me responding in a perfectly calm manner telling him that it was his opinion and not a fact. From there my brain decided that this may frustrate him to the point of violence and what I might do in that situation. Why my brain decided to hang onto this I don’t know, I think it was frustrated from not being able to do something about it and so the visions played out through my head. I got to the Koala conservation area after walking about 10km with him still in my brain a little but nowhere near as much as before. I forgot about him while looking at the Koala’s but he resurfaced on the next stage of the walk. Finally I managed to put him and his antics out of my mind when I hit Cowes beach 5km later, this in total took about 4-5 hours to do so.

So the question I have is this. Even though I had no interaction with this guy and was just sat in the same room as him why did I get so frustrated and hang onto it for so long and more impotently how do I stop it. I think the frustration comes from wanting to stop him from bullying the people he was with. I have a deep hatred for bullies as I have probably stated, having had my fair share of them in my life my reaction to them these days is a little extreme but luckily manageable. How I dealt with the frustration is really not the right way to go about it this much I do know and I must find another way about this. It’s about letting go which I find hard to do, especially when things have got to me. I am going to have to wait until it happens again and then when it does be really conscious about it and every time I begin to think about it create mental distance. I should not let other peoples issues disturb me like this, I am not a vigilante who chooses to stand up to bullies wherever they are. I know I need to work on this and I have needed to for a long time and I know it’s not going to be an overnight change but I don’t want to waste my time thinking about something I am not involved in.