One summer evening when we lived in Plymouth, my family had opportunity to invite over some dear friends to spend some time swimming in the swimming pool shared by our town house association. Now the family we invited over had five children too most of which were almost identical in age to our children; we also had another thing in common, we were both loud. As we enjoyed the evening in the pool, the children of course were using their “outside voices” to express their enjoyment of the pool and being together. It was plenty loud. Some time after we had been their swimming, we heard an obnoxiously irritated voice come from behind some nearby pine trees, “SHUT UP!” She went on to tell us several more times to shut up in an equally or more irritated tone. She insisted that we be quiet because she was trying to enjoy the evening outside. We ended up trying to acquiesce as much as possible, but as I considered the events of that evening, I was struck by the absurdity of what the woman demanded. We needed to be quiet because she wanted to enjoy the evening. In her mind we we didn’t want to enjoy the evening; we were just trying to ruin hers. She was so selfishly demanding that she failed to recognize that her demands were also ruining some else’s evening. This is what we do when we demand things from other people, but fail to consider ourselves. We must reject these kinds of selfish demands and be willing to be discomforted for someone else.