So my husband, John, is not very hard line on most things related to parenting…or in life really. He’s pretty chill. Except where it involves missing school because you are “sick”. He is hardline on THAT, and the kids better produce serious evidence of illness in order to get a day off school. He applies this to work too. I think he’s missed one day in the last 15 years at his current employer. ONE day….that’s got to be abnormal. It’s not that he doesn’t get sick, he does, he just forces himself to work anyway, and pollutes whatever air he happens to be in.
So that’s the context of this conversation I’m about to explain. Gia wanted to “stay home”. She said she wasn’t feeling great and that I should just let her stay home and have a hooky day. So I explained to her that “I'm scared of daddy, he'd flip out and be all up in my grill, and unless she barfed in his presence it wasn’t going to happen”. She looks me dead in the eye with all seriousness and says, “Why are you scared of daddy? He’s scared of YOU.” I guess what she meant was, why waste my time thinking I needed to be scared when I was in fact the scary one. That is some 9 year old wisdom right there.
Then, not much later, John tells me that he had dropped Lucia off at her birthday party sleepover event on Saturday night. He further explains that he basically drove up to the bottom of their long driveway, he could see a circle of 3 or 4 moms (including the host mama) at the top of the driveway, and he just booted Lucia out of the car and took off. He says to me, “yeah, they were looking at me weird and talking about me I could tell. Lucia even said that they were whispering stuff about me when she walked up. Do you think they were thinking I was super rude for not walking up?” This is where in my head I’m thinking “sure, maybe, but DUDE, they were more likely wondering what kind of mid-life crisis you are going thru with your new pimped out, racing tire outfitted, boy-toy car that you rolled up in.” I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m pretty sure. His interpretation: they think I’m rude. My interpretation: they think my husband is going thru a mid-life crisis, and wondering 'where's the mistress?'
Then Romeo tells me that Christopher, his little buddy at school, keeps pinching him and hurting him. He said he’s “being mean”. Really? Christopher has invited him to a play date more weekends than not (most of which we have to decline), and so I’m guessing Christopher has a boy crush, and that the pinching is your traditional rough-housing-be-my-friend stuff that is normal. Still, Romeo’s interpretation was he was “being mean and he doesn’t like me” and he spent an inordinate amount of time wondering how to deal with it without just pushing him hard and getting in trouble himself. School yard justice is complicated apparently.
What do all these random conversations have to do with one another? Glad you asked. They just made me ponder the fact that we all spend SO MUCH time analyzing what someone else “might” be thinking, or what we “think” the situation is based on negative assumptions. So many times we are either FOR SURE wrong, or MOST LIKELY wrong. Yet that sure doesn’t stop us from worrying about it, and stressing about it and theorizing about it, and spinning the worst possible version of events.
Women are the WORST about this (although men do it too). If I see another woman giving me an odd look I immediately wonder what is wrong with my hair, or outfit, or whether she’s trying not to laugh at the spinach in my teeth, or wondering why I don't buy some Crest White Strips. It’s like we are trained to think it’s the worst case scenario, and that certain cues mean certain negative things.
Which is why I got to thinking about my conversation with Gia, when she said “why are you scared of him, he’s scared of you?” Why are we worried about what someone else thinks when most likely they are worried about the same thing and we are both wasting our time? I'm worried about them judging ME? They are worried I'm judging THEM. Imagining the most negative spin on everything definitely doesn’t help our joy. Why do we spend time trying to figure out what someone is thinking, when we are just so determined to put a negative spin on it no matter what? When's the last time you thought, "she probably just looked me up and down because I look so positively amazing!" How come we don't have a positive conspiracy theory we weave in our head, why does it have to be negative?
So our daily joy goal is to HELP OTHERS FIND THE POSITIVE (which in turn helps us). Everyone has bad days and takes their turn churning out the negative soundtrack. The negative comments about themselves, or other people, or their theories that are based on negative assumptions and therefore totally useless. Be the positive voice that redirects that, and that turns that conversation around...making it positive and joyful. Go out…spread some positive. Instead of thinking the worst, think the best case scenario and help other people do the same.
I’d like to eloquently roll this into something that has to do with clothing. I don’t have an ingenious way to do that, but I will say that we got in Little River socks today, and these are like bundles of foot joy magic. They are just darling, each and every pair, and I want to own them all and just see them perfectly stacked up in my sock drawer. When your feet are happy, you’re happy. I think that should be a saying. You can quote me. Nice underwear, nice socks, nice scarves...they significantly
contribute to my life which sounds like an overstatement, but if you add up all the little bits of happiness I get from putting on my favorite scarves (this new one from EF I'm adding to my collection), or my favorite socks, or really pretty underwear. Well...you get a lot of happiness...just saying.
Signed, ME {lv}
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