While flipping through facebook status messages I came upon one that was from The Dearest Deacon that led me to some pondering. She was sharing that her occupation often leads her to do things that were left over due to someone else's perception of a lack in importance. So what makes things important to one, but irrelevant to another? And how do we prioritize the merit of a task when we don't know another's view on its value? These and other questions are what ramble around in my brain.
Let's start off with the obvious: We are not mind readers. We have absolutely no way to determine what someone finds important unless they tell us. We can assume based on our own desires/needs/wishes, but that is the limit to our abilities. My list would start with doing something for one of my children, but someone else may decide that they're own needs are far more important than that of their child's. Is that wrong of them? Perhaps, but I think that it depends on the situation. If a child has to go pee in the middle of a changing room while mommy is trying to find a pair of jeans that will actually fit her, this mommy is going to get her own clothes on as quickly as possible and get the child to a bathroom. (I don't like cleaning up messes and I believe that “better safe than sorry” is a valuable rule.) Another mom, knowing that her child has the ability to hold his bladder, might tell them that she just needs to try on one more pair of jeans. Which one of us is in the right? Here's the crazy thing...I think we both are.
How can two people with different takes on the same situation both be right? Because we each take with us our personality, life experience, stress of the day, etc. I can no more judge her for how she deals with the situation than she can me. We each come at the day in a different way and only our own Higher Power can judge us for that. There are definitely times when accountability comes into play, though. Such as when Person A is asked to do something for Person B, but Person A already has a day full of tasks laid out in front of them and doesn't get to the desired chore. So we can ascertain that Person A found the job to be less important than the other duties they came upon during their day. It does not change the fact that it was very important to Person B...or that it didn't get done. Person A had a choice when asked to be up front and clear that they did not have the time/ability to complete the task for Person B (or maybe the choice of completing the task at some point in the day no matter what else was on their agenda)...they didn't take it. I think this is where the real issue resides.
We are human. We are fallible. We say, “yes” all the time when we really mean “no.” It is the Curse of the People Pleasers. Something that I am all too familiar with. I have offered to do things, go places, give my time to other people for most of my life whether I really wanted to or not. Sounds silly, doesn't it? But it's a compulsion to be needed, liked, wanted around that drives me to walk away from the best one word sentence in the English language, “No.” And here's the thing, if we do something for someone else at our own expense, without love in our own hearts, it negates the good of actually completing it...it's really like we never did it at all. Yes, the task was completed. Yes, the person is satisfied. But I now have a list of reactions that will wash over me: shame for doing something I didn't want to do (not that the chore was shameful, it's guilt for knowing I didn't want to and still doing it); anger because the person didn't react to my doing the job with enough gratitude (yep, I'm that shallow sometimes); or fear that I'll be roped into doing more and more for the person now because they'll expect it now that I did it once....and that means that I am disgruntled and feel no joy from doing something nice for someone else; item thus negated.
I'm not proud of those reactions. They're not “nice” or even really necessary, but I blame it on that darned edit button being broken. I'm working on erasing those thoughts by learning to say, “no” from the start. I've learned that if I'm upfront about the situation, I gain respect from the person and lose no ground in our relationship. That's the power of friendship...if the person is really worthy of it, they understand when we need time to ourselves. It doesn't change the importance of the task, it doesn't erase the need of it being done, but it lets the person know that I'm not available so they can make other arrangements. If more of us did just this one little common courtesy it would greatly improve the way the world works.
Today I am grateful because The Dearest Deacon picked up someone else's slack and did a wonderful thing for someone else. It's one of the things that makes her a beautiful person...she cares deeply for the people around her, she listens with an open heart and she always greets you with a warm smile. She is truly a gift in the lives around her.
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