People Don’t Like Me.
Good. That means things are working.
In the interest of sending around good articles, which I love to do, and promoting material that I appreciate, I have something to share.
First: the above title. There are a lot of people who really, really do NOT like me.
Oh I could list the reasons. I’m not a Christian, I drop F-bombs, I’m too loud-assertive-uppity-strong-muscular-different-outspoken-masculine-pushy-outspoken-unpatriotic. Oh the list goes on for fucking EVER.
OOPS. F-bomb. Get over yourself.
As my irreverent, funny, badass Harley-chick ER nurse-with-an-attitude Ann Litts likes to say,
Don’t like my shit? Don’t read my shit.
No truer words.
However, I also like how Kristi Keller puts it here:
I loved this article.
Because if you grew up in an alcoholic family, you might have found yourself being an uber-pleaser like I did.
OH, that costs. Kristi’s a good bit younger than I am, and clearly she got the memo long before the damned thing landed in MY inbox.
However, it finally did.
There are people who cannot abide my Medium stuff. The good ones who have a brain and a personality who don’t like it stop reading and move on. Like adults. Not my stuff. They get that. Sometimes I don’t much care for theirs either. That does not make them stupid or wrong. It means that we’re not a good fit.
The others, and I will stop there, fire nasty darts covered with curare and hope to do as much damage as possible.
You can choose to take the latter personally, which does damage. I read an article by a woman who wrote about how one ripe asshole of a troller trashed her article. Now she never wanted to write again.
Kindly.
The reminds me of the scene in 42 when Pee-Wee Reese brings in a single angry hate letter to the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers shortly before they were to play in Cincinnati. Reese, who was a Kentuckian, was being attacked for being willing to play with then-rookie Jackie Robinson. Branch Rickey, the owner, then pulls out a sheaf of hate mail, death threats and worse. Hundreds of them. Reese had gotten one. Robinson, well. Robinson played anyway. And changed baseball forever.
What might we be able to change forever if we don’t let the haters stop us?
People are not going to like you. Some will despise you simply because (just ask my Medium buddy Marley K.) you’re Black, you’re a woman, you’re a Hispanic guy, your bi-gendered, you’re…a garden-variety clueless white person. That of course would be me, but I digress.
As if. Somebody’s hate-bomb is going to make you change your behavior. Someone’s caustic ugliness is going to show you error of your ways (be more like them, in other words). As. Fucking. IF.
Dear god, you should see the hate mail I’ve gotten when I put photos like this up on my Match.com profile or on Medium:
Look, it’s funny enough that not a single (or married, for that matter) person in my 45th high school reunion but one brave male soul was willing to have his picture taken with me. It’s even funnier that since then, when I post this photo or similar, I get the distinct impression that someone has transferred this image to toilet paper.
Much the same way my Canadian buddies use TP with Trump’s mug on it, which is a very easy way to say, eat shit and die without being hustled away by Homeland Security. Which is another way of saying America’s SS, but I digress. Wait. That’s ICE. Or, some members of our police force, but again. I digress.
Some people hate me for how I look. Okay. Fine. You have every right to dislike the way I look, the way I live, the way I think and believe and speak and all the rest of it. FINE. Don’t. Fucking. LOOK at my photos. Don’t. Fucking. READ my articles.
I’ve had people write me that the only reason I put a photo like that up is because I’m bragging. (The part of me that used to weigh 205 lbs is genuinely pleased that the excess baggage has been gone for 33 years. The part of me that has had the wherewithal to hit the gym for nearly fifty is also rather glad. You would be too. It ain’t bragging if you’ve done it. And I will cheer your praises to the rooftops for what you have achieved, too.)
You and I and all of us have the right to be who we are.
This doesn’t say to be rude, or disrespectful. Yesterday I did some necessary apologizing to a fellow writer who misunderstood (with good cause) some comments I put on a piece she wrote. I failed to provide adequate context and my attempts to be funny landed with all the gentility of a Stillson wrench to the forehead. To her credit, she sat with it and responded with kindness. We both came out of that gifted with a connection, and since then she’s been able to better understand where I get my humor. The gift to me was a reminder to be far more mindful of how what I write might be interpreted, especially in other cultures. That’s a gracious exchange.
That however, does not mean to chop off large pieces of your personality to appease others. Nor should you apologize for who you are. That’s different.
We are in a deeply intolerant world. I once lived with a roommate who declared me the Devil incarnate because she so feared my belief that all faiths had a place. Not in her world. She had traded a terrible drug addiction for a terrible Jesus addiction. There is no question in my mind that had I stayed there I would have likely stayed there. As in, buried-under-the-backyard-bushes kind of stayed there. She was psychotic and very dangerous. And.
She was one of those pseudo-Christians who are quite happy to ignore the Ten Commandments on days that it happens to serve them, with murder being at the top of the list. It’s kinda important to God, too, but that doesn’t seem to matter when morals are negotiable, and the need to be right trumps all other needs.
Which is why I agree with Kristi: keep on moving on.
Such are our behaviors, driven by utterly unreasonable fears, prejudices and unholy terrors.
My peeps have found me. I found them. My circle of close intimate friends is made up of four, maybe five people. They are a rainbow of cultures, ages, backgrounds, sexual preferences. In a room we’d look like a diversity seminar. We ARE a living diversity seminar.
That offends people too.
NEXT.
My Medium community looks precisely the same way. I love diverse, intense, funny, different voices. All ages, genders, colors, cultures, backgrounds, beliefs. My Medium world is a flat-out delicious kaleidoscope of people. It doesn’t get much better than this. Because out of that community I have cherry-picked a few folks I am honored to now call my friend, spicy Harley chick above included.
You and I can’t please everyone with our writing. I’m going to offend folks. Others are going to find my off-kilter, off-color, rollicking sense of humor a breath of fresh air. That said, I can write a sober, thoughtful, caring piece to a devout Christian and not ruffle a hair. The difference is that I know when to unleash and restrain those parts.
That’s versatility. That’s not changing who you are to make others comfortable. It’s being adaptable to circumstances as required. That’s emotional maturity. Admittedly mine comes and goes, but that’s life.
Here’s how Kristi put it:
As long as each of us has a base level of understanding and tolerance, it’s okay to walk away from anyone who doesn’t serve our own higher purpose. Just wish them well while you’re leaving. (author bolded)
Lots of folks don’t possess even that base level. They’re just base. All I have to do is revisit or unblock all the viciousness from both men and women on Medium, Facebook (now closed) and Linked In. The intolerant, hateful, easily-threatened.
Not my people.
There is a great and abiding truth here. I have a work study that I love, which demands a very different level of participation. It’s not just read spiritual texts and ponder. It’s read and APPLY. In this regard it is different from many so-called religious folks I’ve met. This demands that I integrate these ideals in my daily life. Fail, falter, fuckup, and then DO again. Unless I learn to apply what I am reading and integrate it into my life, I am nothing more than a reader. Not evolving.
When I formally and sincerely apologized to my Medium reader yesterday, that’s application. That’s real work. You don’t dodge it just because a)it’s uncomfortable and/or b) you’d have to own up to being wrong. Tough. I was wrong. Being who you are, being authentic does not give me or anyone else the right to be an asshole. Occasionally being an asshole is part of life.
Why? Because after we’ve had our turn in the asshole barrel, it might just give you and me more patience and empathy with others who are having their turn in the barrel.
From that work, Kristi’s article brings up that Truth: You can’t do my work for me. I can’t do your work for you. That of course flies in the face every uber-earnest Jehovah’s Witness who ever made the monumentally foolish decision to knock on my front door. I have to do my own work. You have to do yours. No amount of proselytizing, pushing, cajoling will change you or me or anyone. Just watch how mulish we all get when someone tries to force us to change.
You and I can’t do our sacred work if we sell ourselves down the river for likes, claps, eyeballs, money, attention or anything else that costs us the work to find out who we really are and what our value set is.
That takes time. Take it. Be true to your instincts. People aren’t going to like you. Some will hate you. If you’re strong-willed, opinionated and an outlier like I am, like all of my friends and favorite people and role models are or were, there are folks who by god will set out to tear you the fuck down, rip you to pieces, such is their terrible fear, their lack of self-worth, their reckless hate. I get it regularly. And kindly, I am a big fat nobody. Imagine those who really are Somebodies, the hate they get. Yet they do the work.
Do. Not. Waver. Do the Work.
Because only you can walk your walk.
