(The line—“Do I dare disturb the universe?”—comes from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a favorite of mine to teach).
How important are you to you? Really ask yourself that question, because today is my birthday, and my gift to myself, other than a killer hike, a massage and a few margaritas with a friend, is to deliver some KAPOW!!!! into your day.
If you have a problem with tangents, deal with it, because it’s my party and I’ll stray if I want to…
So let me start off by sharing Thor’s opinions of human beings:
Thor is right. We all stoop to pettiness, it’s human nature. And we all have petty people in our lives, people with only one goal: to try to undermine our happiness by using emotional blackmail for some imagined or real slight they think has been perpetrated on them.
The question isn’t whether they exist, or whether they’ll be petty. The question is if you will allow them to get to you.
I admit it, I’ve been plenty petty in my 55 years of life. I’ve mostly overcome it, but it wasn’t easy. It took four long years of constant vigilance, intense practice and serious solitude to get out from under it. But for the most part, I’m free. Toughest work I ever had to do.
Toughest work I am still doing.
Most of the time pettiness is not personal, but stems from an insecurity or jealousy from the petty person’s past or present (that was a lot of “p’s”). A petty person could be suffering from low self-esteem because they weren’t “popular” in high school. Maybe their mother never told them they were worthy of much. Maybe they have career insecurities, maybe they have run out of options to get attention.
But I disagree with the experts who say pettiness is never personal. Sometimes it is personal. Maybe a person wants retribution for something you did to them in 2004, and it just makes them feel better that they finally “got” you. They figure trying to piss you off is better than nothing.
So fine and dandy. Let them have their “victory.” Who cares? Don’t enable a petty person by letting him affect your day, your mood or your family. There are only two possible reactions:
Silence or laughter. That’s all they deserve.
Now, if you read my blog with any amount of regularity, you know I have this ability of not letting other people’s comments, criticisms or petty overthrows affect me in the slightest. It’s my superpower.
I’m Deflection Woman.
I live by this quote from Dr. Phil, who responded to a guest expressing worry over hurting the doctor’s feelings:
“Don’t worry about hurting my feelings because I guarantee you not one bit of my self-esteem is tied up in your acceptance.”
Boom, roasted. Great moment, wish I could find the clip for you. And that happens to be my personal mantra.
It’s genetic, I guess, but I can also ascribe my implacability in the face of judgment as a result of having been a journalist and high school teacher for 35 years. Whatever it is, I thank God for it. But it’s not easy. Society doesn’t like implacability. I was speaking to a colleague about the lives of introverts, and we both agreed on the same thing:
Society doesn’t like us. They think we’re dangerous for wanting to mind our own business, to just live our lives. Say you remove yourself from what you consider a life of greed, abuse, anger, addiction, ingratitude, mental instability, whatever. You’re doing something good for yourself, right?
Of course you are. And that’s healthy.
But to remove yourself from that life, you must be vigilant. Because that life will try to pull you back, again and again. And if you somehow manage to prevail?
Society will try to beat the shit out of you.
In The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, Jerry Renault got murdered for refusing to sell chocolate bars in the school’s fundraiser. The Chocolate War is so subversive, it has been removed from many schools. Not banned, just removed as an option. My favorite quote?
“They tell you to do your own thing but they don’t mean it. They don’t want you to do your thing, not unless it happens to be their thing, too.”
Yeah, society can be brutal and petty when you don’t fit the part it wants you to fit. Society likes joiners, agreers, brown-nosers, preeners, head-nodders, conformers.
And pettiness.
Let’s look at verbal pettiness. This is a tough one, because it’s easy to deflect petty actions. Say someone deliberately ignores you at a party, to display their “power” over you. So who cares? Let them have it. No skin off your back. Just talk to someone else.
But petty words are tougher. And unless we’re all prepared to become hermits in the mountains, we all need to know what to do in the face of these kinds of people who want to hurt you with words, or over social media.
My advice? Silence. Nothing, I repeat, nothing, speaks volumes more than silence and indifference. The message you send is this:
No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, no matter what tricks you pull, you can’t hurt me.
Let’s say you just got a semi-prestigious job doing some side marketing work for a small but passionate company. It doesn’t pay much, but it’s a great step towards your dreams of a marketing career, and the addition of it on your resume and the networking you will have access to is priceless. You announce it proudly on LinkedIn. Later that day you get a text from Petty Patty.
PP: Hey, congratulations, I saw on LinkedIn that you just got that little job doing social media marketing. How cute! It seems like a lot of work for not much money, but I’m so glad that type of thing makes you happy! I know I couldn’t do it!
She just basically called you a foolish low-wage earner. Oh, and let’s not forget that she just tried to belittle your basic existence. How in the world to respond to this nitwit?
Silence.
Let’s continue. That job leads to a better one, with more pay. Here’s the same idiot when you bump into her at the supermarket:
PP: Wow, that’s awesome. That’s a shame it cuts into your weekends and that you have to travel. Ugh, traffic is the worst. But if it fulfills you, great! And I know those really high-paying jobs go to people with Master’s degrees and years of experience, so don’t lose hope, you’ll get there!
So now she has accused you of having no social life, and of being an uneducated hack. And my biggest pet peeve, faux pity, the tool of the unsophisticated and intellectually dim.
Don’t respond. Tell her that melons are BOGO, and move on. She’s just sad. You think she feels good after talking to you like that? Maybe for a few seconds, but that kind of shit comes right back to people, and becomes part of their flesh. That’s why her face always looks so pinched and constipated.
You ever meet a mean old person who doesn’t know how to speak lovingly, and still enacts pettiness even at an advanced age? Don’t worry about them. Let them do what they do, and let Nature take care of that shit. What goes around comes around, bitches.
Last scenario:
You finally have it. All of your hard work has paid off. All of the late nights, long drives, fast-food meals, have paid off. You have the job. The salary. The prestige. The power. And whattya know, here comes Miss Thing on Facebook messenger:
Hey congrats! I’m in Turks and Caicos, but I wanted to send my congratulations along! Have fun being busy, some of us just like to stay unemployed and travel, haha! Someone has to work and be successful, and it ain’t gonna be me! I’m toasting you with this peach margarita! Love you!
How can you not just laugh and feel sorry for this person? And by the way, if this sort of thing ruins your mood or day, and you can’t just laugh at it, just get the hell off of social media. It’s the devil, and the only way insecure people can get attention.
So choose your life by choosing not to entertain pettiness. You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel, how much better your life is, when you choose what NOT to respond to. According to Seth Godin, ultra-marathon runners decide before a race under which precise circumstances they will quit. They don’t make a reactive decision when the pain sets in.
Decide what you care about and what you consider worth reacting to. Personally, there is no force powerful enough on the face of the Earth that can shake my peace. None. And at the end of day, guess who is in my house, and in my heart?
My boys. Oh, and myself gazing lovingly at my reflection in the mirror.
I’m 55. And yep, I do dare to disturb the universe.
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