The Book of Knowledge

Even though it's a tiny little book, I could not get through don Miguel Ruiz's slim 138-page volume, The Four Agreements. The ADD Force is growing stronger.

Despite my inability to concentrate long enough to read the book (Twitter was made for people like me), I did manage to find out what the four agreements are. Today I'm thinking about one of them in particular, Don't take anything personally. This is a hard prescription for the insecure, but I'm working on it.

A few years ago, right in the middle of losing my mind, a sadly misguided soul named Teresa came into my professional life. She believed that she was my supervisor and it was really bad timing because I wasn't even a little bit interested in being polite about the misunderstanding. For two years.

Teresa got to a point where whatever I said she interpreted as a veiled slight. One day she showed up at my office and made me listen to a voice mail I had left for her. She intended to demonstrate to me the validity of her belief that I spoke to her harshly (I didn't), and she thought that if I could hear my message after the fact, I would hear what she heard. I didn't. I only heard the same message I had left the previous day and it sounded detached and professional, but perhaps laced with a bit of weariness.

Teresa was stunned that I just couldn't see what was so clear to her. Of course, I knew what I said, so how I could I possibly be objective? I knew exactly what I had intended when I left the message, and there was no issue of interpretation for me.

This brings me to something I once told Teresa: What I say is entirely up to me. How you take it is entirely controlled by you.

And so, flipping through don Miguel Ruiz's book, I found validation right there in Agreement #2: Don't Take Anything Personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

It's a satisfying complement to something my therapist used to say when my paranoia would start to spiral into hysteria: Is that a fact, May? Look at the data. Are you sure you really know what other people are thinking?

I suppose I don't know what anyone else intends to say since, as Ruiz points out, so few people say what they mean. This is not a trait I share with most people. I have learned to temper my bluntness in the interest of being diplomatic, but a conversation with me is rarely laced with ambiguity. Why can't more people be this way? Could it be that they don't want to know what we think about them as people?

A great deal of my life has been spent feeling bad about myself. Self-esteem has been an issue since a very young age, and I struggle with it every day. This evening I was thinking about that when my mind wandered and I started thinking about the conference presentation I had to do last week. Two of my key co-presenters bailed out shortly before the conference, and one of them pretty much blew it off only 24 hours before showtime. I haven't spoken to either one since.

I'm not on a quest to avoid them forever, nor could I; I'm just waiting until I know I can speak politely and I don't sound as annoyed and disappointed as I am. I'm almost there.

Lying there on the couch tonight, I thought about whether or not Jenny and Anita have even noticed that I haven't spoken to them. Then it occurred to me that being dynamic, emotionally healthy women, they probably don't care if I like them or not. It takes a certain amount of indifference to bail out of a conference presentation you know is incredibly important to someone. Considering that, I'm pretty sure that I have neglected to consider the situation as a factor in Jenny's reality or Anita's reality. I've only been seeing it from my own perspective. I, personally, would never do what Jenny and Anita did, but I understand that just because something is important to me doesn't automatically mean it will be anyone else's priority. We are all independent agents.

Is it liberating or depressing to realize that people I know and like may not put any thought into how I perceive them? Frank immediately thought I was asking about something rooted in my insecurity about not being liked, but it's more analytical than that. It hadn't really figured into my perception of the world that my opinion of another's character, personality, behavior, or accomplishment, is not a factor in anyone's facing the day. And why would anyone care what I think of them? Who am I to expect anyone to find meaning or value in my opinion of them? I am not a judge. I am just one more person trying to be comfortable while navigating life's path. We all deserve the same.

Maybe when we all stop taking things personally, we will become truly self-reliant and emotionally detached in a way that protects us so we can achieve without criticism. Abraham Maslow would have disagreed, but even he admitted that others needed to judge the work. And they did. And they disagreed. I wonder if Maslow cared.