Further Misadventures

The thing I was telling my friend about when she went on to mention my mentioning the Buddha in the meeting had to do with a neighbor in my apartment building. This neighbor has been the source of a good deal of late-night music. I knocked on her door a few times and left her a few notes. The final one was emphatic enough that it solved the problem permanently, but from then on, this neighbor hated me, of course. Let’s call her May.

The same neighbor is a smoker and has flouted the building’s no-smoking rule rather persistently. The last many months have featured her smoking in her apartment with all of her windows thrown wide open, no doubt to reduce the evidence of smoking.

When she does this (i.e., about three times a night, five nights a week), the smoke comes straight in my windows, and Tom’s, and those of my neighbor across the hall, who is extremely nice. Let’s call her Eve. Because I don’t necessarily have all of my windows open wide at all times of day or night, once the smoke comes in, it can linger. And of course it is a potent carcinogen.

Eve and I have been talking for months about what to do. A few months ago, I left May a note about smoking, to no avail. This past week, Eve and I agreed that I would try one more note to May, on behalf of myself and her, and if that failed, Eve would contact the building manager.

I liked this plan, because the building manager and I get along extremely poorly and I try to avoid contact with her. I could say this and that are wrong with her, but it’s probably fairer and more accurate to say that we just don’t like each other, and we push each other’s buttons, and it’s probably because we’re very similar in some ways.

I left the note and then I was terrified that May was going to send her boyfriend down to punch me out. Aggression of any sort does tend to cause fear in the aggressor, this I have noticed. And when one is afraid, one may often get angry, so it’s quite a vicious circle.

The next morning I got an angry response from May which said, tellingly, not, “I don't smoke in the building” but basically, “I’m not the only person who smokes in this building, so why are you picking on me?”

I drafted a response and showed it to Eve. Eve worried that the situation was becoming combative and asked me not to say anything more in her name. I promised her I wouldn’t and decided not to respond at all, but wait and see if my note had helped, and if not, to bite the bullet and go to the building manager.

Next thing I know, I get a horrible email from the building manager saying that May feels like I’m harassing her and Eve feels like I’m dragging her into my battles and using her name without her permission! So then the usual acrimonious exchange between me and the building manager ensued via email, plus I was brooding about Eve going to the building manager and saying I was using her name without permission when the only time I had used it WAS with her permission. (“That’s very wrong,” whispered Mara.)

But my long-suffering you-know-who said that very likely the building manager made it sound worse than it was and to assume the best. So then I left Eve a bar of Venezuelan chocolate and a card asking her forgiveness for making her feel uncomfortable, and I got a nice note back from her saying she wasn’t mad.

Since then, no smoke has emerged from May’s windows, which is great.

I also noticed that once upon a time, I would have thought it was terrible that I got into a fight with the building manager, but now it doesn’t seem that terrible, maybe just because it’s happened about ten times. In one of her emails, she asked why I hadn’t gone straight to her if I thought May was smoking in her apartment. Gee, I wonder why that was.

I do suppose that if I had it to do all over again from the beginning, I might have always communicated with May in person rather than leaving a note. It is easy to get caught up in one’s own rhetoric.

I asked my friend who’s a nurse if I should really be worrying about May’s secondhand smoke. She said secondhand smoke is not good, and that I might want to look into an air purifier, but she also said she thought stress and irritation were the greater health risks.

This had crossed my mind, as well, but do I reduce stress by saying, "Yeah, apartment full of smoke, whatever," or do I reduce stress by saying, "As soon as I battle these bastards into not smoking, then my apartment won't have smoke and I won't have stress!" I reckon something in between.

It brings to mind the serenity prayer they say in 12-step programs: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference. Which are the things I should accept and which are the things I should try to change? And how hard should I try?