Vote for me...for everything
(Tree, if you see this I'm not trying to violate copyright you're the best please don't come after me)
There are one hundred reasons why and how we each become the people we are. Childhood, geography, genetics, socioeconomic status. I will not attempt to dissect how I ended up this way; the important part is that I am a wildly desperate people pleaser.
Since childhood I have thought that one of the worst things that can happen to a person is being unliked. Not in a “no one likes to be bullied and everyone needs friends” kind of way. More in the John Mulaney running for mayor of everywhere kind of way.
This is a fine way to live if you want to be sick with worry, totally inauthentic, and absolutely miserable 92% of the time. Once, I told a dear friend that someone didn’t like me anymore and he replied “You don’t even like them! So why does it matter?”. Easy for him to say (he’s widely well liked and also not a little bit insane like me).
Eventually, though, the weight of being everything to everyone will catch up with you and you will break. Small cracks in the foundation made throughout my life lead to last summer’s full collapse. In the months since then I have learned many things and one of them is this:
I am under no obligation to be liked. We are called to be kind, to not do or wish harm on ourselves or others, to be polite. I won’t get to heaven faster because people found me enjoyable to be around.
The other thing I learned? That lesson we all learn over and over. People value authenticity. Molding myself into the image of whoever I’m in front of in an attempt to mirror all their favorite traits back at them might make them like someone, but that isn’t me. Turns out that it’s better to be disliked or merely tolerated for your true self than liked for a facsimile.
Don’t get me wrong, this is very much a work in progress. Just the other day I shared with my girls a situation that may cause me to have to disappoint someone and I was genuinely dismayed at the idea. Each one came back with the same gentle admonition: You don’t owe anyone anything.
So my challenge to myself and to you, dear friends, in the middle of the Mondayest of months: let yourself off the hook a little bit.