“When we approach someone with the goal of understanding, we accept that there isn’t one correct interpretation of a set of facts, but rather multiple experiences and viewpoints”
-Dr. Becky Kennedy, “Good Inside”
I am a middle child. We’re notorious pleasers because our position throughout childhood is often as a compromiser, peacemaker, and swing vote among our households.
It could have been this middle-child syndrome, or my ADHD, or my complete lack of common interests (or so I thought) with my siblings, or my deep creative obsessions that led me to feel as if my job was to make the most people the most happy at all times, if I could, even if it meant setting aside my own opinions, desires, or goals.
This is a chicken or egg situation, and a conversation best reserved for a licensed therapist, but whichever came first, I carry an aversion to being the bad guy. Obviously, no one likes to be the bad guy, I’m not a special case, but some people are comfortable being perceived as the bad guy. It’s a skill. It can be learned. I am learning it now. I am not as good at it as I’d like to be. Sometimes, I just feel like I’m being a big jerk. But it takes some effort to get yourself to this place if you didn’t grow up that way, or if you were taught that it was bad manners.
This avoidance of negative energy caused me to stifle dissenting opinions I had in group settings, especially at home, where outing myself as an opposing perspective carried zero benefits. It caused me to stay in relationships long after I should have ended them because I couldn’t make the hard choice to end them, even when I knew I should have, which of course, causes both parties more pain. It’s caused me to tolerate states of living and states of being that haven’t been sustainable long-term and have caused me existential distress once I discovered that.
Being a people pleaser can have upsides. I think I’m a pretty funny guy. If I see an opportunity to make someone laugh, I compulsively do it because I want their approval, I want them to like me, I want to dissolve tension, and I want to demonstrate that I possess a skill that not everyone has. This trait can make you a valuable asset in the workplace, too. I enjoy solving problems and finding solutions. I want to make my partner happy, my parents happy, my kids happy, my friends happy, my readers happy, these are all positive goals.
The problem comes when the pursuit of that approval comes at the cost of your own happiness. Again, there’s relativism here, as no one can feel happy all the time, and certainly shouldn’t cast aside the happiness of their loved ones simply for the endless pursuit of their own perfect happiness. But when I can’t even enjoy my own tattoos because I’m aware that my parents hate the idea, that’s a problem. If I can’t discipline my kids consistently because I need the one with more mood issues to trust me and bond with me more, that’s a problem.
This is why knowing yourself is so important. No one is responsible for your happiness except you, because no one really knows what makes you happy except you. That’s the idea, anyway. If you don’t know what makes you happy, then you should figure it out so that you can work towards it instead of resenting others for failing to get you there.
It’s important for people pleasers to reach that point where they’re OK with the knowledge that people they love might think they’re making a big mistake. This sounds stupid to anyone reading this who has never struggled with this. Again, it’s a skill to experience the discomfort of disapproval and not react by eagerly reversing course just to make the discomfort go away.
My friend James is a great example of this. If I had to invent a Tyler Durden type of alter-ego to handle all my direct unpleasant confrontations and advocate for my interests, he would look and talk like James. James does not give a fuck. James is not uncomfortable if he comes off like an asshole. James is not concerned with retaining the pleasure of your company if you do not understand this. James is secure in his identity and he is not bothered by telling you no.
Now, has James acted like an asshole to me before? Yes. But that’s just my opinion. Is James often correct when he tells me some harsh truths after I talk to him about a situation I’m dealing with? Yes. That kind of person tends to do both things.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be liked. But there’s something wrong with being unwilling to be disliked.
Without this balance, you’re either just a truth-telling prick with a clean conscience but no friends, or you’re a very well-liked pushover who never advocates for your own needs and gradually comes to hate and resent everyone around you for the prison cell of self-denial to which you sentenced yourself on their behalf.
Do I think it’s my parents’ fault that I’m not comfortable showing them my tattoos or talking honestly about why I love the designs? Kind of. A relationship is a two-way street, and at least part of this dynamic comes from their expectations of me as their son and they ways they failed or succeeded in teaching me about acceptance or unconditional love. But is it their responsibility to manage my feelings about this? No, it isn’t.
I’m the one who has to either keep wearing long sleeves around them so that I don’t have to deal with their disapproval, or even worse, their gut-punching non-reaction, when I share my tattoos with them, or else find some less direct way to share it with them, like texting them pictures, or passive-aggressively including it in this essay.
Their household may have made me a people-pleaser, but it was merely the potter’s hands. The clay of this good-guy pot was my own shining personality, in all its chaotic uniqueness.
We all have to take this responsibility for ourselves if we are to change our lives.
You have to accept that you are different from literally every other person that you know. Hell, you’re even different from yourself. I saw a meme once that said this:
“A different version of you exists in the mind of everyone that has ever met you and it’s very different than what you think about yourself. The person you think you are…does not even exist outside your mind.”
You’ll never meet anyone who agrees with you about everything. If you think you’ve met that person, then you probably haven’t made them feel safe enough to openly disagree with you. You will meet people who agree with you on so many things that the minor areas in which you disagree are either no big deal or hardly ever come up.
I’m best man to a friend of mine this year whom I’ve known for 17 years. We were college roommates for 4 years. We are as alike in humor, taste, leisure activities, and social dynamics as they come. We’re incredibly different people as well, as we should be, not sharing the same genetic code and having grown up in different households with different siblings and different parents of different means.
Even this guy with whom I’ve had maybe 3 arguments is different from me, but not in any way that affects our friendship. And when we do disagree, we’ve made each other feel safe to express our differences without fear that the friendship has now shifted in an uncomfortable direction. We give each other room to be messy.
There will always be someone, somewhere, who thinks that you are wrong. Your job is to make sure that person is either cool enough to let bygones be bygones, or to make sure that that person isn’t your boss or spouse or anyone who has the power to make your life miserable. Or to be willing to stand your ground even if they do, if it comes to that.
Seriously, you will literally never be 100% right. Even when you’re literally 100% right (the Earth is round, do I really have to hyperlink this?), there will be people who say you are wrong. I don’t think the 2020 presidential election was stolen. I feel pretty secure and confident in that opinion. Plenty of people disagree with me. This troubles me, but none of those people affect my day or my mood directly, so what can I do but live my life and let them do the worrying?
Worrying just cheats us out of peace of mind when a situation is out of our hands. I can’t do anything about my parent’s attitudes towards tattoos aside from what I’m already doing, which is getting them and forcing them to accept that I have them simply by virtue of having them, I don’t even have to say anything. I can only manage my own anxiety and my own feelings about their feelings about my tattoos, before they’ve even happened.
Also, by whose standards am I deciding my own value and sense of self-worth?
There’s no perfect way to act, there’s no point system. Assuming there’s no God or divine arbiter of right and wrong in the universe, for argument’s sake, there is no standard except that which we make for ourselves. Accepting this means accepting that you are the master of your own destiny and the primary judge of your own actions.
Probably my favorite poem is the classic “Invictus” by William Earnest Henley. The poem ends like this:
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
“I am the captain of my soul”.
To me, that means that nobody can decide who you are and what you’re about. People can try to make you into something else, make you do all kinds of things, even by force, but no one can ever take away your freedom to think freely. That’s what having an unconquerable soul means to me.
You have the right and the freedom to be who you want to be, to think what you want to think, and to like what you want to like.
Now, I’m not arguing for rampant moral relativism. There are ethics, morals, codes, commandments, and social contracts that most humans throughout history have agreed are the standard for humane deeds. There are such things as justice, for example. Even those broad concepts, however, are dependent on which ethical tectonic plate you’re standing on and whether or not it has shifted into slightly different waters that have changed your hierarchy of needs.
It’s not right to murder someone, but what if you know for absolute certain that they plan to murder you tonight? What then? Does it become self-defense? Can you be certain that they were going to kill you first? According to the law or according to God?
Moral relativism leads to the justification of terrible things. Do I really need to explain the Holocaust? The Russian invasion of Ukraine? The African slave trade?
How about I share this instead:
That’s a sketch from the British comedy show “That Mitchell & Webb Look”, from 2006. It perfectly lampoons moral relativism, self-awareness, and contemplating the broader view of one’s actions. It’s a lighthearted way to laugh at the otherwise horrid truth that multitudes of humans across history have committed terrible acts under the banner of moral superiority, without the whimsical self-awareness, contrition, and conversion depicted in this sketch.
If only Hitler had done this, or the Crusaders, or Vladimir Putin. Of course, when you don’t care about how you’re perceived by the weak, whom you seek to subjugate through ruthless strength, self-awareness is just another dastardly weakness, a mind game by your enemies, something you should not allow yourself to engage with, lest your iron will be weakened and your cause abandoned.
There’s a reason that the large ethic rocks in our society have to be largely agreed upon in order for a group of humans this numerous to be able to function in relative peace.
(There’s the word again, “relative”. I say “relative” peace because even though we’re perpetually trying to dominate and destroy each other and end the human race on planet Earth, hey we haven’t yet. High five?)
The reason is because without a basic set of laws predicated on human nature for us to use as a starting block for law and order, there would be (relative to today) chaos and absolutely no way to hold people accountable for their actions.
The small rocks, that’s where we’re completely floating around. Yes, murder is bad and stealing is bad, and lying is bad, but is it bad to love Nickelback? Most people would say yes, it’s borderline criminal to love Nickelback. But what do you say? That’s all that matters, friend. It’s ok, this time, to look millions of people in the eye and tell them that they’re wrong and not be an insane person for doing so.
This is the beauty of subjectivity, and boy is it underrated. Nickelback doesn’t cause cancer (I don’t think) and the haters aren’t scientists with proof that they do. They’re people with different opinions than you. You’re allowed to disagree with them just as much as they’re allowed to disagree with you. With something as subjective as art, there is literally no criteria necessary for you to justify enjoying something other than saying “I just like it”.
Now, do people with knowledge of music composition or songwriting experience or band management have valid opinions to offer to this Nickelback discussion? Yes. Their expertise should count for a lot, especially if you yourself have none. You should hear them out. You might learn something, even if that knowledge leads you to a different perspective on your beloved Nickelback. But it’s also possible that you can hear someone out, understand their perspective, and still disagree. Expertise mainly lends itself to more specific arguments about which band write better lyrics or composes better songs within a specific genre, where knowledge of the craft can make one more of an authority on the art form. But when it comes to what you simply do or do not like, that’s totally up to you and you don’t have to explain that.
Tattoos. Not everyone likes them. Most of the people that don’t like them are older people. They’re entitled to their opinion, I’m entitled to mine. It’s my body, my money, and my choice. Hell, I got one yesterday, in fact. Who lives with the decision forever? Me. Who takes all the risk? Me. Who gets to enjoy the process of designing them, planning them, and looking at them? Me (and my wonderful artist).
Should it matter to me that other people aren’t a fan of them? No.
“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”
-Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”
No one is asking for your thoughts on things that are none of your business. You’re not asking for other people’s thoughts about you, are you? The problem is they’ll often offer them anyways. They’ll make you feel wrong.
But if this is all a matter of perspective, then what matters most is your own informed one.
Now, there are legitimate reasons that this isn’t easy for people. They might have parents, bosses, friends, or partners that they’re afraid to piss off. But should that fear be the driving force behind their actions or inactions? Absolutely not. But telling them that the only people worth having in your life are those who accept you for who you are, that’s easier said than done for a lot of people, especially in the beginning.
Sometimes your entire network is made up of people who only know you as they think you are, as you appear to be, or as they expect you to be. Sometimes you have to bide your time and exercise some tact while you get your feet under you, establish yourself, and gain independence if you expect to make big moves without resistance or opposition.
I moved out of my parent’s house less than 5 weeks after I graduated college, and the main reason I did that was because I did not want to feel subject to their rules, explicit or implied. Even though I was and am an adult, even though I was my own man, I couldn’t be, and wouldn’t have grown to be, had I stayed there. That was 13 years ago and I’m barely beginning to self-actualize even now.
Autonomy is everything. Many people aspire to exercise this autonomy and live a better life for themselves, authentically, without having to mask their personalities in the interest of social acceptance or cultural expectations, but cannot, because they are financially or emotionally dependent on someone or something that could make their life more difficult if they said or did the wrong thing.
A lot of people equate money with freedom. That’s true to an extent, but only as far as that money correlates with autonomy. For a lot of people, making more money allows them the autonomy they seek. Not everyone wants to buy fancier shit. A lot of people just want to be able to get out of debt, change careers, go back to school, leave a bad marriage, or move to a better city in order to make positive change.
In the same way, I don’t believe people actually want to go around pissing off other people and acting selfishly. I know that things seem that way right now, the world is filled with pricks who treat other people badly and don’t care. But I think people are just so afraid of being fucked over all the time, so they’re in a “kill or be killed” mindset.
I think most of us just want to be allowed to live our lives the way we want, without being punished or ostracized for it. And I believe that, for most people, this simply means being allowed the things we in America claim to provide: Freedom of speech, of expression, of association, and equality.
Is it okay to be an asshole, then? No. While I support transparency, authenticity, and living your truth, that does not give you the right to treat others with disrespect or contempt.
It’s okay to be somewhat of a pleaser when it comes to basic dignity and humanity. But it stops short of assuming responsibility for other peoples’ feelings.
You can be kind to others without allowing them to project their insecurities onto you. You can please others without signing over your free will to them.
There’s few greater feelings than being accepted for who you are, as you are. Too few of us know that feeling, and too many of us know what it’s like to live without it. I can handle making most of my peers uncomfortable as long as the small group that matters accepts me. If you don’t have this dynamic, you need to find new people.
Here’s the takeaway: Give grace and hopefully you’ll also be given grace.
Recognizing that no one will ever be considered 100% right should liberate us to road-test our beliefs, to make mistakes, to occasionally have bad ideas, and to learn from opposition. We’ve turned public discourse into a single-elimination round. One mistake, one misguided allegiance, one poorly-aged take and you’re done, and you can never be taken seriously again.
The reality is simply that nobody is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. I think we put our complete trust in our heroes when we find them, but then when we discover that they used to have bad opinions, or have a strange take on such and such a thing, suddenly everything we saw in them becomes tainted goods. Obviously this excludes genuine terrible crimes like Bill Cosby’s.
Keep your identity small.
When you endorse someone, be specific that you love their idea about such and such, not that you’re all in on them as a person, because the fact is you don’t know them.
When you have a contrarian take, make sure you know what you’re talking about, and even if you do, assume that there’s more to the subject than even you’re aware of, and remind everyone that this is just your perspective and that theirs can be valid, too.
When you don’t know all the details of something, just admit it. You’ll come off like less of a dick.
You don’t have to think like everyone else. You shouldn’t think like everyone else, by default. But by extension, they’re not always going to think like you or agree with what you have to say. This doesn’t make anyone a bad person, so don’t worry about it.
Just be confident in the things you allow to come out of your mouth and the actions you take. Don’t tiptoe to protect everyone’s feelings, but don’t be a bull in a china shop, either. Be respectful, be generous, be gracious, be unassuming, and be prepared to have your mind changed.
(This was the final essay in my Spring series. I’ll be taking the summer off to focus on other projects, personal development, and my family. There will still be a Knick Knacks newsletter every month, so you can look forward to those.)