I Don\u2019t Wanna<\/p>\n
My mother taught me to be polite,\u00a0to show up with a good attitude when I got invited somewhere and always\u00a0reciprocate. No matter if I had a good time or not. I remember seeing her\u00a0sitting on a sofa in someone\u2019s house, looking bored and fake smiling. I used to\u00a0follow suit and say yes to whatever showed up, but times have changed and so
have I.<\/p>\n
One of the gifts of getting older\u00a0is giving yourself permission to not do things that you don’t want to do. And to absolutely do things that you do want to do. There just isn’t enough time to waste trying to please someone else. During the height of Covid, when we were holed up in our homes, a friend asked me how I was doing. Her question didn’t surprise me. We all felt the isolation. But my answer to her question did surprise me. I smiled and said, \u201cI\u2019m so glad I don’t have to hug anyone I don’t like.\u201d<\/p>\n
For me, being alone wasn’t such a shocking\u00a0or foreign thing. As a writer, I was used to being alone for long stretches of\u00a0time. But now, it\u2019s the \u201cholidays,\u201d as they say, and after multiple vaccinations\u00a0and boosters, we’re meeting at people\u2019s houses and eating together at
restaurants. Parties, dinners and celebrations with friends and family can be fun\u00a0as we break bread, sip wine and have interesting conversations. But it can also\u00a0be a drag when we end up tolerating people we don’t particularly enjoy, like\u00a0the weird uncle, the snooty cousin who boasts about where her children go to\u00a0school, or the eccentric neighbor who gets tipsy and corners you with the same
boring stories you heard last year.<\/p>\n
This year, I was invited to several\u00a0holiday gatherings. I was grateful for that, but when it came time to respond\u00a0to the invitations, I had to ask myself, \u201cIf I could choose where I want to be\u00a0with no \u2018have-tos,\u2019 where would I go?\u201d I imagined myself sitting at a dinner\u00a0table in someone\u2019s house and thinking, \u201cI don\u2019t wanna be here.\u201d Then I imagined\u00a0myself at someone else\u2019s house, smiling and having interesting conversations. That\u00a0was where I wanted to be. But what if someone else got offended? What if they\u00a0held a grudge? What if they talked about me behind my back? The answer was a\u00a0quote from the title of a sixties album. \u201cSo What?\u201d<\/p>\n
My dilemma came down to a simple decision.\u00a0I could go somewhere because \u201cso and so is having such a hard time\u201d or try to\u00a0please someone because I had passed on their last invitation. Or I could show
up late, make an appearance and give a fake excuse to leave early. These choices\u00a0were about making someone else comfortable and making myself uncomfortable. But\u00a0what if I put myself first instead of trying to please someone else?<\/p>\n
A friend said, \u201cYou never have to go\u00a0anywhere and be with anyone you don’t like \u2013 ever.\u201d I exhaled. I didn’t have to\u00a0hug anyone I didn’t like \u2013 \u00a0ever, Covid or no Covid. I didn’t have to do something I didn’t want to do \u2013 ever. I could take care of myself first and kindly decline an invitation. If it offended someone, so be it. Better them than me.<\/p>\n
I know that sounds selfish. I used\u00a0to see it that way but I don’t any more. I follow a simple rule: I\u2019m only interested\u00a0in being somewhere if it feels as good or better than being alone. This guideline\u00a0is difficult if we\u2019re programmed to ignore our own needs and wishes. That\u2019s the reason\u00a0that I write. I feel in tune with life and myself when I\u2019m sitting at my\u00a0computer and hitting the keys, watching words and phrases appear on the screen.\u00a0I can be writing anything \u2013 a blog, a reflection, a book. The simple act of\u00a0sitting there and letting my mind wander and express myself on the page is my\u00a0favorite thing to do.<\/p>\n
Knowing that we \u201ddon’t wanna,\u201d and\u00a0doing it anyway feels like an act of aggression toward ourselves. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. Sometimes we have to go the doctor or the dentist. We have to exercise to keep our bodies and our minds healthy. These are \u201cmusts,\u201d but there are so many things we do because we think we should. When my father died after fifty-one years with my mother, she said to me, \u201cI\u2019m confused. I don\u2019t know if I went to that restaurant because Daddy wanted me to go or because I wanted to go. I\u2019m not sure what I like and what I did to please your father.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if we feel weird or different,I believe it’s a writer\u2019s job to express things that other people are afraid to\u00a0admit. When I was writing my book, \u201cMemoirs of a Ghost,\u201d I had a decision to\u00a0make. Was I going to hold things back because they embarrassed me or was I\u00a0willing to tell my truth? I decided to tell it all and not conceal the less\u00a0attractive parts of me. I was sure if I had done something I wasn\u2019t proud of,\u00a0there were plenty of other people who had done the same thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, says\u00a0something like this: \u201cNo one else can sort out for you what to accept about\u00a0yourself and what to reject, what opens up your world, and what keeps you going\u00a0round and round in repetitive misery. The key to feeling more whole, more\u00a0connected and less shut off is to be able to see clearly who we are, what we\u2019re
doing and what we want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doing what you want will open the\u00a0door to the things that heal you. Doing what you don’t want will close that\u00a0door and cause you to spiral downward into suffering. If we pay attention to the\u00a0voice inside that says, \u201cI don’t wanna,\u201d we\u2019re giving ourselves a gift and\u00a0transforming that downward spiral into an ascending stairway with an open heart
and a peaceful mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I Don\u2019t Wanna My mother taught me to be polite,\u00a0to show up with a good attitude when I got invited somewhere and always\u00a0reciprocate. No matter if I had a good time or not. I remember seeing her\u00a0sitting on a sofa in someone\u2019s house, looking bored and fake smiling. I used to\u00a0follow suit and say yes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2299,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298\/revisions\/2299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}