Pleaser - Essay

Pleaser

You were not born a pleaser. You stood in your own truth at the moment of your birth. Your first breath was likely exhaled as a complaint, a demand for a different situation regardless of anyone else’s desires in the room. And you got what you needed. But as you grew, you came to understand that your wants would not always be met, no matter how you cried, begged, vandalized, or retaliated. You learned that those physically stronger than yourself would get their way, no matter what. Furthermore, you found that life went easier for you if you pleased those in “control”. So, you learned to give away your choices to those that would determine the ease of your life, and you began to call your ease, “happiness”. As time went on, more and more people stood in line for you to please. Finally, you found yourself wondering what your own truth was, what you believed, what your own feelings were and where your happiness went.

So here’s what you did: you took a nap in the middle of a work day. No one knew it but you. You went to your car thirty minutes before lunch time, put the key in the ignition, drove to a park, parked in the shade, pulled out your favorite pillow (this was a premeditated act) and slept like the dead for almost ninety minutes. This was because you hardly slept the night before out of nervousness about the nap. When you got back to your office, your boss asked where you were just before lunch. Your heart fell crooked but you calmly said, “I had to leave early today. I can make it up tomorrow afternoon if you want.” He frowned and shrugged. “No,” he said, “I just wanted to know if you knew who’s anchovies were in the refrigerator. Those things are starting to stink.” And he walked away.

Now it was your turn to frown. That was it?

The next Friday you went to the movies with your friends.They wanted to see some new action film but you wanted to see a chick flick that you knew would be the kind of pathetic cotton-candy that would be panned by every able critic from LA to NY, but you didn’t care; Michael Fassbender was in it.  

You spoke up. “I want to see “Love in Manhattan.” 

No one was used to you speaking in any kind of contrary manner; they were all used to you just "being happy”. In other words, doing what they wanted to do. It turned out that of the eight people in the group, four men and four women, only three men ended up seeing the action film. All the women wanted to see what you suggested, plus one man because he was trying to impress one of the women with his sensitivity. Afterwards, everyone met up and got ice cream and ribbed one another about their choice of movies. It became one of the more enjoyable outings the group ever had.

As you lay in bed that night, a smile crept across your face. “What else do I like?” you said in a reverent whisper. And you began to name them, the things you like. 

Looking outside onto a glistening city street, you said, “I like the desert more than the rain.”

Continuing, you said, “I believe that God is not a white guy in heaven. I don’t know what he is, but it’s not that. And whatever God is, it’s made of more love than I could ever understand here.”

“I like helping people. I don’t want to spend another minute making a corporation money.”

“I think my mom was really, really wrong when she said I would never make a good wife.”

And finally, with a smile you said, “I want to eat a tiny bit of chocolate every day for the rest of my life, and on my gravestone, I want it to say, ‘She Ate Chocolate, And A Lot of It.’”

You laughed, and this time you had no trouble falling asleep.

In later years, you came to realize that when you stated your truth in a group setting, it was hardly ever an original thought. Sometimes it was, but more often than not it appeared that someone else had the same idea but was going to be content staying silent. When you spoke up, they did too. Alliances and friendships started, some fleeting, some profound and lifelong. Most importantly to you, you found that by standing in your truth you became acquainted with the Giver of All Truth. You began to feel for your truth to register in your heart before you spoke or acted, underneath your own desires to be right, under the emotion. It’s not to say you never made mistakes, that you never suffered, that you were always right. But what is certain is that you were committed to standing in what seemed true to you at the time, to the best of your knowledge. This has given you tremendous freedom to move wherever your Truth does. Therefore, you were teachable. You were by very definition, humble. But that doesn’t mean you did not speak with searing directness at times. The first time you debated the benefits of ecology over profits if they are ever at odds, you wondered if you had been too merciless in your presentation of hard facts. You went home, feeling that you had been correct. But had you been right? You sat in the dark of your new home in the desert and watched the lightning play over the distant hills and smiled. Nature, and hence the God of Nature, must also state their truth with force at times. 

Following this thought came another. “I am from Nature, but I am not God. God can throw lightning bolts if God wants to and great destruction can occur. But even when the desert burns, it has the capacity to once again bloom.” 

You considered this. “If I ever feel I need to speak my truth with the force of lightning, I will make certain I leave the ground fertile for more thought and more discussion, because I can’t know all things even if I walk in my truth.” You lived that way since that experience.

As more years passed, you found that walking in your truth made you more childlike than you had ever been. You came to love truth and sought it from many places. You saw how it fit like puzzle pieces whether it came from the East or the West, and that fitting them all together was like assembling a jigsaw picture of the face of God. You began to walk slower because it felt like carefree, like childhood, ...plus it hurt your creaky knees less. People, old like you and young like you had once been, of many differing political and philosophical bents, counted you as a friend; not because they agreed, but because they knew where you stood, because you were honest and because you listened with intent to really hear them, just in case you might agree after all. 

“She is fearless," they said. "She has no problem admitting she’s wrong because all she cares about is the truth, not her ego.”

We came to visit your grave today, the four of us left from that group that went to the movies all those years ago. Our respect for you is immense. You’ve helped each of us from making mistakes that might have altered our lives for the worse because you said things that were hard for us to hear,and hard for you to speak. But you loved the truth more than your feelings. Other times you made us laugh at ourselves and at you, too, and see the humor that courses like holy blood through all things. You were always honest with us and with yourself, even when it hurt. We are grateful to have known you. 

And we are all eating a bite of the chocolate we brought before we place it gently on your headstone.