Agreeability has been my modus operandi in interpersonal relationships. Get on with it Ryan. It’ll be fine. It’s not a big deal anyway. These rationalizations serve to soothe over my compromise until it seems I never transgressed at all, and even more, at least for a while, it seems everything will be fine.
But every single compromise we make runs on an open tab. These conflict deferrals show back up, with the bill unpaid, at the bar of our life. The next conflict could involve a different person (in my case, often it did not, and often, it was required to readdress things with the same person). Perhaps it reoccurs a week later or even a decade later. Whenever it does appear, the core conflict is just as hard to deal with, still unaddressed, with the bartender just as ready to serve another rationalization: It’ll be fine man, get on with it, keep the peace Ryan. Tab open.
I’m not advocating for disagreeability. I’m advocating for being reasonable, not agreeability at the cost of losing who we are, what we want, and what we need. What I’m working to understand is that I cannot cede the ground beneath my feet and continue to know where I stand. Every time I give up that ground, I put my future self into a debt I will have to pay.
And we don’t have that kinda time in the one life we got. In our future self, who are we say if we’ll be capable of paying our debts? Conditions change. Will it be easier when we have kids? When our parents health is declining? When we’re older and our health is declining?
We can’t be that ignorant (and arrogant). Let’s close out our tab, the next chance we get.
To living a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
(P.S. One tab I’m trying to close is my need to be “good at everything” I do, which I wrote about this week. If I can close that tab, even while being not too awesome at the things I do every day, perhaps I can enjoy being myself, here.)
