Yesterday evening I went out for a wine with a good friend. I was quite tired, so I told her that I just stay outside for one wine. Also I didn’t want to spend the whole Saturday morning in bed fighting with a hang-over (the Düsseldorfer old-city is a place where you only get out boozy as hell, if you want it or not – just enter the 3 Amigos Shot Bar and that’s it). Then she asked me if I want to continue the evening and go out with her male friends from work, who are coming from another city. “Well”, I thought, “why not…a little male company can not damage me, right.”
We went to the old city and met the guys and we went to a beer-brewery. I wasn’t really present or included in the conversation, which was totally ok for me, because I was almost sleeping. I laughed, when everyone was laughing, I starred into the atmosphere, when someone was telling a story, really trying to focus, but it was impossible.
So I stood up and told my friend I am leaving and said goodbye to the guys. My friend came with me until the exit-door and we talked another two minutes. When I was about to go I heard myself saying to her: “Can you please tell the guys, that I am tired and was about to go out just for one drink, so they don’t think that I saw them and ran away and they don’t think about me, that I am a...blablabla”.
When I was walking home, I was thinking about it, what I’ve just said. Who am I trying to please? Ok, often I please my family, just not to attract troubles, often I please my friends, just not to attract troubles, often I please my colleagues, to make them feel good, often I please people on the streets, just to avoid something else…
So is my life made out of pleasing other people, just not to make them feel xyz, because I think, that they think that I think xyz?
The funnier part is, that after I heard myself saying that arse-licker nonsense, my friend replied: “Honey, they don’t even think that deep”.
And she is absolutely right!
Yes they don’t think that deep. Most of the time people don’t think about you. So what does it mean? We are losing our energy for something that isn’t there. Yes there are people, who every now and then complain about others not responding or picking up the phone. But it takes 2 seconds of their life. To overcome the habit to please others takes us hours, days and weeks of our lives away. And chances are, they already have forgotten about you. Yes, there are chronically mad people too. But eliminate them out of your live, for your own well-being.
This little, tiny situation made such a big difference in my life. I am concerned, how other people will react to my decisions or actions. People, who’s names I don’t remember, who’s faces I probably won’t recognize (and they don’t remember my name and my face too).
Think about it, how often you try to please other people. If you please your friends or your family members, don’t you think that they would appreciate you being honest? I think so. Still, I had friends in the past who were calling me just to give me feelings of guilt because I disappeared. So they were telling me in a ugly-funny manner, how rude I am, that I don’t call them or call them back. And I was laughing with them inventing-by-talking, how busy I am and that I am this or I am that. Those people are not in my life anymore. And each one of us is still happily alive.
The energy I’ve spent yesterday, trying to please someone, who won’t ever remember me, is huge and that is the daily harsh truth. Our trained mind is always trying to make us feel bad about something. And our awakening mind is trying to shut our trained mind down and let us be.
It is such a luxury, to just be. It is a pleasure, to just be.
Without pleasing, craving, proving.
Just be..