“Please deliver a letter for me,” the email said yesterday night.

I stared at it for a minute. My eyebrows furrowed, and my stomach clenched. Taking a deep breath, I closed my laptop and opened up Candy Crush Saga for the third time that day. I drifted off to sleep as striped and wrapped candies appeared.

In the morning, my phone started ringing around 9 am, jerking me awake from my uneven sleep. Groaning and rolling my eyes, I glanced at the caller id and fumbled for the “ignore” button. In a few moments, I heard the gentle ding of the voice mail notification. I listened and rolled over in bed. I closed my eyes, drafting a reply.

I sent an email with every sentence beginning with “I feel…” and “I am concerned…”. I looked over my four sentences carefully. No accusations. No disrespect. Just simple statements of my situation and my context. Just clear explicit sentences of what I wanted. An apology to appease his request. After all, it is only a request, not a demand.

Then I clicked send. Would that snuff it out enough? Would it be enough? Moments later, I received a response. It was what I wanted. But inside me, I could feel the desire to punish and shame people. But I resisted and wasn’t it easy…wasn’t it just easier to get what I wanted?