The art of not being offended

The moment I heard Andrew wanted a new workout partner, I contacted him hoping he’d choose me. I barely knew anything about the guy except for the fact that he had the body of Greek God and then some. After explaining how my recent fitness plateau had me stuck, he said that he’d be more than happy to help guide me in the right direction.

In our first week of pumping iron together, I learned that Andrew was gruffly opinionated with a brash sense of humor — qualities that I’d typically avoid.

“Where do you buy your supplements?” He asked one day. I told him I shopped at Vitamin Cottage.

Andrew scoffed. “What would they know about weight lifting supplements? The people who shop there all look like they have AIDS.”

Apparently Andrew didn’t know about my HIV status. I’ve heard lots of dumb, offensive things about HIV, but this one took the cake. I wanted to rip into him and let him know that only an awful person would say such a thing. But by the time I got my thoughts together, the subject of the conversation had drifted way off.

As I left the gym that day, I wondered if I could seriously continue to work out with this man. I decided I wanted the help on my body badly enough that I could swallow my pride and see it through. Besides, maybe I would have a second chance for a proper, less-emotional response down the road.

Sure enough, a month later I mentioned something about shopping at Whole Foods. According to Andrew, Whole Foods had AIDS-like customers as well. By now I had a better response.

“You know, Andrew,” leaned in closely, “I have AIDS.”

His eyes were like saucers. “Really?” he asked with a look of utter remorse that most of his friends would probably never see.

“Not AIDS,” I had to clarify, “but yeah I am actually HIV positive.”

“Wow. But… you don’t look like it at all.”

And with those words, I felt a shift in the way I wanted to respond. Clearly he, like a large portion of the population, only understood HIV and AIDS as a thing of the past. Instead of being hell bent on making him feel bad for what he said, I suddenly had empathy for him. I opted for this to be a teachable moment.

Truthfully, modern HIV/AIDS is something that remains difficult for a large part of population to understand. And shock humor’s popularity makes a lot of room for political incorrectness. An emotional response would be natural, but I have found that taking offense and leading with emotions doesn’t really help anyone. Badgering someone for their mistake rarely evokes empathy. Instead it often just throws up their defenses and we lose the precious opportunity for anybody to truly understand anyone.

It hasn’t always been easy to resist offense when I have been offended. In fact it can be a bit of an art form in order to step back, cool off, and work on bringing in some logical thinking. But by not leading with emotion, I not only got the benefit of being the bigger person, but I also got genuine empathy and compassion as a means of authentic (non-forced) mutual understanding.

Our workouts together turned into long conversations about HIV, life, relationship, and all sorts of human messiness. By not taking offense, I got the opportunity to help a man learn the value of some self-censorship. And in return, he actually taught me how to not let my liberal heart bleed so easily. We found a good friendship where we not only worked on our bodies, but also exercised our brains.