He was angry. He was walking right toward me.
It was several months ago at a golf tournament in the Pacific Northwest, at a place called The Home Course in Dupont, Washington.
In golf, four people play in a group, and ours was one of about ten foursomes that day competing against each other. There were no team games today. For the next four hours, it was man against man.
Which means it can get tense. There’s not a lot of casual conversation. Everyone wants to win, and this often brings out the worst in people. Players get angry. They curse and throw clubs. They snap at other competitors when they don’t follow proper golf etiquette.
Which brings me back to the angry guy. Three of us were waiting for him, he was late. That’s a big no-no. On top of that, he had just driven up in his golf cart, screeched the brakes, cursed under his breath, and slammed his club cover on the ground. Then he walked the twenty yards to the first tee where we all stood.
He recovered his composure a little bit and said hello. We all wondered why he was upset, but it wasn’t time to talk about this stuff. It was time to compete. The mindset is, Drop your drama and let’s play.
We hit our shots and started the four-hundred-yard walk. As I walked, I wondered why he was upset. For years now I’ve been studying the way perception creates emotion, and it has changed the way I see people. Before I might have seen him as a “senseless angry guy,” but now that I see people as having emotions for good reason, I wanted to know what his reason might be.
Emotions may seem irrational on the surface, but experts say they’re deeply rational. “There is no emotion without thought or reason,” writes psychologist Richard Lazarus in his book Passion and Reason: Making Sense of Our Emotions. “Our emotions are really products of the way we construe what is happening in our lives…without appraisal, there is no emotion.”
By the time we reached the second hole I discovered why he was upset. He had lost his special hat. In the drive from the practice area to the first tee, it had blown out the back of his cart.
“It was a Chambers Bay US Open 2015 hat,” he said. I could see the matching Chambers Bay logo on his coat, and asked him about it. “I volunteered at the US Open,” he explained, “and got the hat, with this coat, as a gift.”
Okay, now his anger makes sense. The US Open is the biggest golf tournament in America, like the Super Bowl of golf. It was the first time the Pacific Northwest had hosted an event like this in the 115 year history of the tournament. For this guy, who loves golf and had the experience of a lifetime, that hat and coat had incredible meaning to him.
So it makes perfect sense that he’d be upset about losing his hat.
As he described the hat, I remembered, I saw it laying on the grass next to the practice putting green. Without a word, I pulled out my phone and dialed the golf course pro shop. “Hi, I’m out on the second hole and my playing partner lost his hat right near the practice putting green,” I said. “It’s a white rain hat with a Chambers Bay logo on it, very special to him. Did anyone pick it up?”
“Yes, we have it,” they said.
“Great,” I said. “Can you have someone drive it out to the second hole for us please?”
“Sure, will do,” they said.
I hung up the phone and said, “Okay, they have it and are bringing it out to you as we speak.”
This big guy looked at me like he wanted to bear hug me in his joy. All the anger was gone. He was shocked and elated. He couldn’t believe someone would think of him enough to help him recover his hat. It was like I became his best friend, the guy who rescued his dog from drowning and gave him a million dollars at the same time.
“Thank you,” he said, beaming. “I can’t believe you did that for me!”
“I could tell that you really valued that hat,” I said. “I was happy to help you.”
We spent the next four hours joking and laughing and having fun. The whole mood of the day changed.
I don’t write this story to impress you with my compassion. Compassion isn’t my strong suit. I’m naturally low in empathy.
But something changed two years ago when I discovered what I call “the roots of love.” Before, I didn’t know how to love very well, but after my discovery, love became more natural to me. I wrote about my epiphany in a chapter of my recent book, Automatic Influence, and titled the chapter, “Automatic Love.” Now that I’ve developed the habit of seeing people as people of equal value and needs as myself, compassion comes natural. Love is automatic. It’s normal for me to find out why people are upset and help them.
My wife can testify. I’m a different man because of the revolutionary idea in that chapter of my book.