Don’t Assume It’s Personal

I had a humbling experience this week. And not the, I’m-so-humbled-to-win-this-award kind, but the I’m-not-as-smart-as-I-think kind.

Years ago, I read about The Four Agreements, which are:

• Be Impeccable With Your Word.
• Don’t Take Anything Personally.
• Don’t Make Assumptions.
• Always Do Your Best.

If you can manage to do those things, it’s quite powerful…but it’s hard. I remind myself of the second and third ones a lot. They’re about the stories we tell ourselves, and then accept as the truth.

As I’ve done for the last couple of years, I chose one student to tutor over the summer. The student’s mom was very grateful and we agreed she’d drop him off at the library on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 am. I showed up on Tuesday at 10, but she wasn’t there. I texted, waited 15 minutes, then texted again, asking her to let me know if we were still a go for Thursday. I assumed she’d forgotten, which is no big deal. She’s a busy mom. It happens.

Later that morning I saw that she’d read the message, but she didn’t respond, and nothing the next day either. I tried to think of why she might have changed her mind. We hadn’t met when we made the arrangements, but during the last week of school she’d come on a class field trip and I introduced myself. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that something must have happened when she met me. After all, it was the only variable that had changed. She must have misinterpreted something and made assumptions about me. I chose not to take her judgment of me personally (oblivious to the fact that thinking it must be about me was taking it personally).

I tried to make the most generous possible interpretation of her behaviour, but it wasn’t working. I was volunteering my time to help her child. I’d already spent time, money and effort preparing lessons. And she’d ghosted me! In my version of the story, I was the hero and she was the villain. I told other people about it because I like being the hero of a story.

I don’t get angry easily, but by Thursday, I was pissed. I told Ray it was unfair of her to judge me based on assumptions (oblivious to the fact that I was the one making assumptions). I composed snarky messages in my head, but I didn’t send them. Instead, I sent her a text just saying that I assumed she’d changed her mind and that I’d go ahead and make alternate arrangements.

Soon after sending my text, I got a voicemail. I won’t provide details (it’s a small town), but suffice to say there’d been a tragic incident in her life, and her world had been turned upside down. Her voice was shaking on the voicemail. She still wanted to go ahead with the tutoring, once she’d established a new normal, if that was okay with me.

I felt terrible. I wasn’t impeccable with my word – sharing the story with others when I didn’t have the whole picture; I had taken it personally; and, I’d made assumptions.

It’s easy to say, “Well, how could I have known?”, but that’s kind of the point. We rarely know what’s going on in other people’s lives – the guy who cuts us off in traffic, the woman who slighted us at the grocery store – but we let it get under our skin, with no idea that the annoyance they caused us might be trivial compared to what they’re going through. It was a good life lesson, and a reminder to be careful with the stories I tell myself.

Friends in All Seasons

We recently watched The Four Seasons, the tv series starring Tina Fey and Steve Carell. It’s based on the 1981 movie by the same name, that starred Alan Alda and Carol Burnett. We re-watched that after seeing the series. Both the movie and the series follow three couples who vacation together four times a year. It’s about the delicate balance of maintaining close bonds with friends or spouses over decades.

“Old friends, the people who have seen you through the brightest and darkest parts of life, the people who have known all the different versions of you, are such a blessing. They are the witnesses to your life.” ~ Tina Fey

Ray and I have been blessed with a group of friends we’ve been getting together with for at least 15 years, some for much longer. You can’t hide who you are with friends you’ve known that long. People who know all your quirks and foibles, and love you anyway, are worth keeping close.

We spent Canada Day weekend celebrating those friendships at Rob & Sue’s new cottage in Calabogie. I thought it might take a while to adjust to a new place after so many years at their old cottage, but it felt as though we’d always been there.

Because they’re on a river now instead of a lake, we introduced a new activity. Rob dropped five of us off upriver at Anne & Sanjay’s place, and we floated-paddled back to the cottage on SUP boards.

Four of our group have birthdays in early July, but we only had so many dinners, so we had to pick and choose our reasons to celebrate. Murray is retiring from the public service, and Gary’s birthday was a big one, so they got the cakes. It was fun to watch Gary singing enthusiastically when the cake came out, and then gradually realizing it was for him. (If you’re in Ottawa and haven’t tried Simply Biscotti cakes, or Biscotti, you’re missing out.)