Untitled
“Always do your best.” “Be kind and courteous to others.” “Don’t just think about yourself.” I grew up hearing moral guidelines like these all the time, particularly from my parents. One in particular that I want to take about today is one that I’ve heard time and time again throughout my life, the idea that “you shouldn’t go looking for a fight,” but I don’t think I fully understood what they meant by that until this Thanksgiving. That evening 14 family members sat around the table post-feast discussing aspects of our lives, essentially catching up. Eventually the conversation arrived at my sister. Being a senior at Loyola Marymount University, she is preparing her senior thesis, specifically about how heterosexual individuals approach people of the opposite sex when flirting. My sister went on about some of the different things she was learning, studies she was looking at, and some social observations she had made at local bars and coffee shops. For a majority of her explanation, I sat silently, intently listening, until she said “You can read people like a book.” I couldn’t just sit in the shadows. I started asking her some questions about the types of data she was looking at, the generalizations she was making, and the theories she was basing her conclusions on. Never once did I say her methodology was flawed, I simply asked her to explain more, actually tell me why she thought certain things. Her reaction was far more hostile than I expected. Her responses became cold, passive aggressive comments, gears more towards saying my question was stupid than actually acknowledging my concerns. It became clear she didn’t want to talk, so I dropped the issue. Soon the conversation moved on, and our tension was dismissed. Two days later while driving with my dad, he mentioned how my sister was really upset about how I confronted her at the dinner table and how I needed to apologize to her. It was at that moment I realized what my parents really meant by “don’t go looking for a fight”. They meant “avoid confrontation”. They meant just sit along for the ride and don’t cause a commotion, or else you will only hurt someone. This approach clearly works wonders for my family, given my mom, who has so much repressed rage towards her siblings and mother that they are only allowed to visit twice a year for short moments during the holidays because that’ all she can tolerate. Or my sister, who spends hours and hours venting about every minor thing someone says or does that has irritated her in the past week. Everytime something comes up between them and another person, they would rather keep their mouth shut, let the issue persist, and bitch about it later. It’ a vicious cycle where anger builds to a snapping point, a lashing out of pure rage. An aggressive flurry that is more about getting anger out of your system than actually solving the problem. They believe it is better to internalize issues and pretend everyone agrees. This may be my family’ way, but it isn’t mine. I’m not going to hide from a problem just because it may be uncomfortable. I want to actually talk about things, come to conclusions, learn more about why people think what they think. I don’t want to put on a “yes-men” front for others, I want to be me. And that’ exactly who I’m gonna be.