[Qcwa] Contest boycotts?

[qcwa@mailman.qth.net]

Hello, Bob:

I am in no way surprised. The world (i.e., "the people" in the world) is not 
today what it was. Not just what was when I was first licensed fifty years 
ago, but even five years ago. Amatuer radio operators all over our own 
country today are not what they were when we were all first licensed (at 
least twenty-five years ago.) 

He has a right, I suppose, to respond as he wishes. To talk to whomever he 
chooses to is within all our rights. Yet how he chooses to do what he does 
reveals more about him than it does about you and me. It is totally about 
him, not us.

I am saddened by the downward spiral in the civility in ham ranks that I have 
observed over the past several years. But it is nothing more than a 
reflection of how people today are less civil than they used to be. As well, 
I have learned through my experiences in countless venues there is nothing I 
can do to "make" another person be different from what he or she chooses to 
be. If I may, I would suggest that we all be rather careful as to how we 
choose to respond to these rebuffs. These behaviors, as I said, are more 
about them than they are about us. These are the behaviors of people who 
apparently don't know to do anything else. That's why people who are in 
stages of high anger are called "mad."

Those barbs sent our way are by people who want to "get our goat." I worked 
under an incompetent supervisor (who hasn't?) about whom I once remarked in 
anger and frustration to a colleague, "He just gets my goat!" That friend, 
wiser than I, simply pointed out the only thing under my control, "Stop 
putting your goat in the front yard."

I was taught that as human beings our anger is directly proportional not to 
what we actually get, but to what we expect and don't get. The ball is in our 
court. Where we lob it depends totally on us. And if we respond in a 
mini-war, those who rebuff us have gotten just what they wanted -- to prove 
we are less civil than they. 

73,        Raymond                W5VPU


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