you stood on my toes
This one is about chosing whether you are at cause or at effect, ie whether we have any control in the matter.
We might hear someone say that someone caused a situation and that very well might be true, but it may not be complete.
Occurences can be caused by one particular instance but they could also be caused by many other things happening, or not happening. So to put an particular occurence down to one person and one person alone could be misleading at times and possibly not very helpful.
Here's an example, two people are ballroom dancing and one person accuses the other of not getting it quite right with the phrase "you stood on my toes". Yes, it is true that toes were stood on ere stood on but how do we know who caused that. It could have been the person doing the standing putting their foot in the wrong place, but equally well it could have been caused by the person being stood upon putting their foot in the wrong place. See how there could be confusion, and that is just with two people involved.
The same accusation may happen in a more complex situation such as a football game where one person is blamed for the whole loss because they missed a penalty and yet that is one person at one moment in the game when in fact there were another 10 people on the team and another 90 minutes of moments and any one of those may have caused something to happen.
And just to make it more complex, whilst the cause may be one person doing something, it could equally as well be one person not doing something.
Blaming someone else may be a behaviour that we use at times but there will be times where it could be more useful to ask yourself what you could have done, or what you could do, to get a better result. If you do this then you are at cause.
In general terms is it better to be at cause or at effect?
So back to that dancing and the standing on of toes. Now I am thinking, I put my foot where you were about to do yours, I won't let that happen again, and to do that I will .....................
