Picky
as you said
I am picky
not that I didn’t appreciate your offer
I’ve learned
that just because I can
doesn’t mean I have to
I’ve learned by past experience
time after time
of saying yes
to please someone
who wants to gratify some need of mine
doesn’t result in satisfaction
so when I say no
it is because I don’t want to
not that I’m not interested
or that it isn’t something I might enjoy
but because I know better
in fact
I’d rather have you think
I’m picky
than explain why I say no
and calling me picky
isn’t going to change my mind
This is a concept that took me a long time to realize: “because I can/ doesn’t mean I have to.” It fights out consumer culture’s push of more more more in which there is no such thing as too much – having enough is seen a settling for less – enough is passive, more is productive. In some areas (ie music) I suffer from this addiction to ‘too much.’ In posting about my collection on Fridays I sometimes find things that I had forgotten I had 🙂
This piece is also another reflection on people pleasing. Some people will take someone turning down a drink, a toke, a line of coke personally. As if they are being told they aren’t good enough, their booze or drugs aren’t good enough – they feel judged. Too often trust is based on mutual enjoyments, friendships are built over passing joints around. In the queer world saying no to drugs is seen as saying to to sex. But that’s another post.
A large part of the 227 Rules for monks deals with their comportment in public – mostly ways of not calling attention to themselves. Not that they encourage people pleasing but at the same time they encourage the diminishment of self – the rules for clothes make one robe indistinguishable from that of another monk. Which goes against our culture … or is that cult of identity.
I’m not going to become a monk but I do like being less confined by the need to prove identity or to surrender identity to please someone else. “because I can/ doesn’t mean I have to” is a balance of not letting opportunity taken or declined become definition.
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