One "can't" too many
Jun. 29th, 2008 02:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greendalek303Inside of a week, an individual (I won't call her a co-worker even though we work for the same employer) has given me:
That's eight "I can't"s in five days. I counted. That's just too many. I'm not going to make conversation with this person anymore or chat with her on the bus. Not going to be rude or discourteous, I'm just penciling her out of my life. I'll sit elsewhere or take a different bus. Her nonstop defeatism is frankly starting to suck me down with her. I frequently need to cue up Rollins Band's "Up For It" after associating with this woman.
I think on this in the aftermath of Bob's life celebration --I swear there must have been 200 or more people in there --folks whose lives had been touched by Bob in some way. I look at that and reflect on how much Bob accomplished in his life; as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
noelfigart put it, fully rounded and leaving nothing incomplete. There was so damned much to celebrate. I contrast that with a tale once told to me by moonstaff's mom --about a relative (I want to say an aunt, although I may have it wrong) who as a teen managed to work up enough courage to head to New York City to try out a new career path. The first week in the city, her apartment got robbed and it devastated her, sent her flying back to her rural hometown, and she never set foot out of it again for the next 60 years. moonstaff's mom told me that there were perhaps 15 people at this woman's funeral and none of them really had much to say or reflect upon --that her life had essentially been a day-to-day process of sitting around complaining, and waiting to die.
Mareli, I should add, was also most emphatically NOT an “I can’t” person. A situation might have been difficult, or challenging, or not solvable right away, but it was never a flat-out “I can’t.” That's ninety years' worth of living without those two words ever escaping her lips. Think on that.
I think I just need to just cut more of that kind of thing out of my life path. I'm way too close to 40 to expend energy on Special Little SnowflakesTM who seem only to be able to define themselves in terms of what they can't do --boasting about it, even. What a cop-out. Worshippers at the altar of self-pity. You have a medical condition, you take steps to fix it. You have a handicap, you adapt to it. Something's impeding your forward motion, you figure out a work-around.
(And y'know something? I find that the more years go by, the more I hear a "But I caaaaaan't" out of someone, the more it actually sounds like a "But I don't waaaaana.")
I guess I really just need to delete the "I can't" folks from my day-to-day roster, and work instead on associating more with the sort of folks who can do, no matter how many difficulties arise. The change really does start with me.
"I'm allergic to that."
"Oh, but that makes me dizzy."
"My hip won't let me do that."
"My back hurts."
"I'm allergic to that too."
"But I can't sit like that."
"I could never do that, it would make me so dizzy."
"It's too cold in here."
That's eight "I can't"s in five days. I counted. That's just too many. I'm not going to make conversation with this person anymore or chat with her on the bus. Not going to be rude or discourteous, I'm just penciling her out of my life. I'll sit elsewhere or take a different bus. Her nonstop defeatism is frankly starting to suck me down with her. I frequently need to cue up Rollins Band's "Up For It" after associating with this woman.I think on this in the aftermath of Bob's life celebration --I swear there must have been 200 or more people in there --folks whose lives had been touched by Bob in some way. I look at that and reflect on how much Bob accomplished in his life; as
noelfigart put it, fully rounded and leaving nothing incomplete. There was so damned much to celebrate. I contrast that with a tale once told to me by moonstaff's mom --about a relative (I want to say an aunt, although I may have it wrong) who as a teen managed to work up enough courage to head to New York City to try out a new career path. The first week in the city, her apartment got robbed and it devastated her, sent her flying back to her rural hometown, and she never set foot out of it again for the next 60 years. moonstaff's mom told me that there were perhaps 15 people at this woman's funeral and none of them really had much to say or reflect upon --that her life had essentially been a day-to-day process of sitting around complaining, and waiting to die.Mareli, I should add, was also most emphatically NOT an “I can’t” person. A situation might have been difficult, or challenging, or not solvable right away, but it was never a flat-out “I can’t.” That's ninety years' worth of living without those two words ever escaping her lips. Think on that.
I think I just need to just cut more of that kind of thing out of my life path. I'm way too close to 40 to expend energy on Special Little SnowflakesTM who seem only to be able to define themselves in terms of what they can't do --boasting about it, even. What a cop-out. Worshippers at the altar of self-pity. You have a medical condition, you take steps to fix it. You have a handicap, you adapt to it. Something's impeding your forward motion, you figure out a work-around.
(And y'know something? I find that the more years go by, the more I hear a "But I caaaaaan't" out of someone, the more it actually sounds like a "But I don't waaaaana.")
I guess I really just need to delete the "I can't" folks from my day-to-day roster, and work instead on associating more with the sort of folks who can do, no matter how many difficulties arise. The change really does start with me.
