Have you ever wondered how fast a person can change within 10 seconds? A husband who was whispering sweet words to his wife few minutes ago suddenly turned on a rampage and started to find faults in everything she did, or a manager who was praising a subordinate for his good work an hour ago, suddenly changed and penalized him for not doing “enough”. Things like this do happen and whenever we see them, most of the time, we’ll just say “Oh no, he snapped” or “He’s not himself”.

But that’s not the main point. The main point is what happens BEFORE and AFTER the “turnaround” part. There could be some reasons that cause the person to change so drastically. For the manager’s case, it could be a scolding from the upper management which caused him to vent his anger on the subordinate. And for the husband, it could be something the wife said which he hated so much, that he poured out all those bad experiences he had accumulated over the years at once. No matter what are the causes, one question that the husband and the manager should ask is – are those causes so serious that they don’t care about the consequences?

Because after the ‘turnaround’, the consequences can be pretty bad for everyone. For the husband, it might end up in a divorce and for the manager, he could lose a very good subordinate.

So at the end of the day, is it really worth it to make such a ‘turnaround’ and pour out all your anger within that few seconds, only to regret it for many years after that? Most people never think about that. And I know it’s very difficult to think about it when you are on the edge of your sanity and you just want someone to take the ‘anger’ away for you. But for me, the consequences could be too big for me to bear. I wouldn’t want to hurt the people I care and treasure just because of my “10 seconds turnaround”.

Why regret over something that you can actually avoid?

Remember, it’s definitely easy to have the “10 seconds turnaround” and feel slightly better. But looking at how bad the consequences might be, I think I would prefer to feel worse for that short period of time, than to suffer the aftermath of my “10 seconds turnaround”.

p/s…. I call it 10 seconds and not 1 or 5 seconds because I figure if anyone can snap within 5 seconds….that person must be having some very serious emotional issues, which is in a different context altogether.