January 9th, 2010
What It Be Like?
Drawing boundaries is nice and healthy, but being distant isn’t either nice or healthy… especially if it prevents one from engaging in potentially meaningful relationships.
In undergrad, a fellow student advised me that I should let my barriers down. Now, I don’t know what HIS underlying motivation was for that admonition—or even if their was an underlying reason—but I believe his words still have merit more than a decade later. As I navigate my way through my thirties, I’m finding that some of the advice people gave me years ago is coming in handy and making me rethink how I conduct myself in daily life. I now figure that there is a reason why some words of advice, that seemed random when bestowed, stick in my mind while others fell by the wayside… and I’m also finding that other words were temporarily forgotten, only to resurface when circumstances summoned them forward.
Once upon a time, my Aunt Bonnie advised me that in the professional world, people may want and might even expect me to sleep with them or involve myself in not-so-professional ways that I might find compromising or just “not right” for me.
She was right.
I learned that the code of sexual-liaison-speak is real, and people won’t always be as forthright as Bell-Biv and DeVoe and say “Do Me Baby!” or even Color me Badd, “I Wanna Sex You Up!” Hints are thrown (I wanted to listen to this great band before I go back to my room in this hotel), and the catcher is expected to have a mitt, and if they don’t catch or if they just watch the ball fly through the air and land at their feet, the pitcher throws in another direction, I guess. I also learned that people will find what they want. If what they want from you isn’t what you want to give, it’s on to the next taker, plain and simple. No need for any panties or drawers to get in a bunch. It’s life, and that’s just the way it is.
But I, you, we don’t have to get “got” in the process. That wouldn’t be meaningful relation-shipping.
And THAT’S just the way it is—what it be like.
