Character assassination
Last night, a friend hung up on me. I think she was drunk, but I'm not sure. She hung up on me, because I kept asking her to stop telling me her angry opinions about people I was about to meet.
She is angry at a lot of people. I've been angry at people too. And I know that sometimes it just helps to get it out of your system. But in this case, I didn't want to hear it. I am going to be talking to these people about working with their non-profits or small businesses as part of my "change the world" experiment.
I said, "You're poisoning my perceptions of these people before I even get to know them."
She said, "Well, aren't I allowed to talk? There are my opinions."
I said, "You're entitled to your opinions. But you're not entitled to push them on me, if don't want to hear them. I want to gather my own information, see what I think first. After that, I probably will be interested in your comments. I just want to be able to choose when I hear them."
She said, "Well, I think you're just trying to censor me. To tell me what I can and can't talk about."
And then she started going on about how someone was inadequate as a man, sucked off women, had never accomplished anything in his life, and was lazy, a liar and associated with other people that were just like him.
I said, "Please, stop!"
And she hung up on me.
Whew. I'm having some difficulty sorting this out.
Was I really pushing away the information, trying to control when it arrived?
Or was it just too difficult to listen to her anger?
I mean, if she'd just said, "Be careful of this guy. He tends to be more talk than action, and he could waste your time," would it have bothered me so much?
Maybe it's this. I didn't want her anger -- however justified by facts and her own experiences -- injected into my process of gathering information and analyzing these opportunities. I don't trust opinions that are based on that kind of emotion. It seems to be more about her, than about the people she's talking about it.
If there is any truth in any of it (and there might be), I am forced to go through some probing inquiry with her to sort out fact from emotion. At that point, the whole focus shifts to her, and I don't want to have her at the center of this process. It's not about her.
I guess this comes down to a "boundary issue." Those hard lines drawn in the social fabric. Stop right there. I don't want it. It's my life, and I get to choose what I want in it.
Easy in concept, but hard in practice sometimes. Like this time. My boundary, according to my friend, violated her freedom to say whatever she wanted. I couldn't convince to stop giving me her angry opinions. So, frustrated at my continuing attempts to censor her (and she was right about that), she stopped talking to me.
It makes me think of how many of my conversations these days include "I don't want to hear it." Or "We've already discussed this." Or "If you don't like it, stop talking about it and do something to change it." Or "Enough! This is just wanking, and I've got other things to do."
Which is why I have a reputation for being almost too candid in business. And why I've been losing friends, or going through a lot of drama with them, when I don't want to talk about their "stuff" that seems endlessly the same, year or year.
It also makes me wonder how much character assassination I've done. Particularly with D, when I was so upset. I can see that my angry friend has unresolved issues with these people, and she doesn't have a lot of objective perspective on them. For years, in talking or thinking about him, I didn't either. Everything I knew or could say was about how he made me feel. And to try to understand that, I made a lot of judgements about his character, and shared them with a lot of people.
These days, rather than judging his character, I tend to remember how he handled opportunities. Things he did to manage his own feelings. What I heard from him about his view of the world. He was really different from me.
Today, a lot of what he brought into my life would get handled with a line drawn in the sand. No, I don't want it. This is my criteria for acceptable relationships. If you can't do that, go away. This is my life, and I get to chose. It's not an issue of right or wrong, unless someone has a gun at your head, metaphorically or otherwise. It's just exerting some personal power on what you can control.
A long time ago, the era when I first knew this friend, I lived in Spain surrounded by wealthy retirees, European aristocrats, successful writers and artists, their children, people who seemed to live in an entirely different reality than me. My husband, Bill, was a brilliant writer who could do anything. I was a lot younger, and after he died, I was thrown on my own devices. I didn't feel particularly confident about making my living as a writer. And a lot of what I did to support myself was helping out rich people in different ways -- organizing their libraries, cooking for their dinner parties, housesitting when they were elsewhere. They didn't treat me like a servant. I was a pretty and bright young woman, the widow of a legendary character.
I didn't come from money. It was a kind of miracle I was there at all. I lived on almost nothing. Dinners of a cauliflour and cheese sauce. Or a salad of greens and some slivered ham. I didn't feel like I was poor, because I was so grateful to be there, to be able to sit in the cafe and listen to the wonderful conversations, and to be included among those people. But I remember thinking that they expected more from life than me. They just assumed that they would have money and do well. My biggest hope was just to survive.
I wondered if I could cultivate that kind of assumption in myself. Expect more. Let my eyes slide over the options that perpetuated povery and professional nothingness, and keep looking until I found options that enabled me to grow and thrive professionally and as a person.
Maybe all this is just a riff on that same issue.
She is angry at a lot of people. I've been angry at people too. And I know that sometimes it just helps to get it out of your system. But in this case, I didn't want to hear it. I am going to be talking to these people about working with their non-profits or small businesses as part of my "change the world" experiment.
I said, "You're poisoning my perceptions of these people before I even get to know them."
She said, "Well, aren't I allowed to talk? There are my opinions."
I said, "You're entitled to your opinions. But you're not entitled to push them on me, if don't want to hear them. I want to gather my own information, see what I think first. After that, I probably will be interested in your comments. I just want to be able to choose when I hear them."
She said, "Well, I think you're just trying to censor me. To tell me what I can and can't talk about."
And then she started going on about how someone was inadequate as a man, sucked off women, had never accomplished anything in his life, and was lazy, a liar and associated with other people that were just like him.
I said, "Please, stop!"
And she hung up on me.
Whew. I'm having some difficulty sorting this out.
Was I really pushing away the information, trying to control when it arrived?
Or was it just too difficult to listen to her anger?
I mean, if she'd just said, "Be careful of this guy. He tends to be more talk than action, and he could waste your time," would it have bothered me so much?
Maybe it's this. I didn't want her anger -- however justified by facts and her own experiences -- injected into my process of gathering information and analyzing these opportunities. I don't trust opinions that are based on that kind of emotion. It seems to be more about her, than about the people she's talking about it.
If there is any truth in any of it (and there might be), I am forced to go through some probing inquiry with her to sort out fact from emotion. At that point, the whole focus shifts to her, and I don't want to have her at the center of this process. It's not about her.
I guess this comes down to a "boundary issue." Those hard lines drawn in the social fabric. Stop right there. I don't want it. It's my life, and I get to choose what I want in it.
Easy in concept, but hard in practice sometimes. Like this time. My boundary, according to my friend, violated her freedom to say whatever she wanted. I couldn't convince to stop giving me her angry opinions. So, frustrated at my continuing attempts to censor her (and she was right about that), she stopped talking to me.
It makes me think of how many of my conversations these days include "I don't want to hear it." Or "We've already discussed this." Or "If you don't like it, stop talking about it and do something to change it." Or "Enough! This is just wanking, and I've got other things to do."
Which is why I have a reputation for being almost too candid in business. And why I've been losing friends, or going through a lot of drama with them, when I don't want to talk about their "stuff" that seems endlessly the same, year or year.
It also makes me wonder how much character assassination I've done. Particularly with D, when I was so upset. I can see that my angry friend has unresolved issues with these people, and she doesn't have a lot of objective perspective on them. For years, in talking or thinking about him, I didn't either. Everything I knew or could say was about how he made me feel. And to try to understand that, I made a lot of judgements about his character, and shared them with a lot of people.
These days, rather than judging his character, I tend to remember how he handled opportunities. Things he did to manage his own feelings. What I heard from him about his view of the world. He was really different from me.
Today, a lot of what he brought into my life would get handled with a line drawn in the sand. No, I don't want it. This is my criteria for acceptable relationships. If you can't do that, go away. This is my life, and I get to chose. It's not an issue of right or wrong, unless someone has a gun at your head, metaphorically or otherwise. It's just exerting some personal power on what you can control.
A long time ago, the era when I first knew this friend, I lived in Spain surrounded by wealthy retirees, European aristocrats, successful writers and artists, their children, people who seemed to live in an entirely different reality than me. My husband, Bill, was a brilliant writer who could do anything. I was a lot younger, and after he died, I was thrown on my own devices. I didn't feel particularly confident about making my living as a writer. And a lot of what I did to support myself was helping out rich people in different ways -- organizing their libraries, cooking for their dinner parties, housesitting when they were elsewhere. They didn't treat me like a servant. I was a pretty and bright young woman, the widow of a legendary character.
I didn't come from money. It was a kind of miracle I was there at all. I lived on almost nothing. Dinners of a cauliflour and cheese sauce. Or a salad of greens and some slivered ham. I didn't feel like I was poor, because I was so grateful to be there, to be able to sit in the cafe and listen to the wonderful conversations, and to be included among those people. But I remember thinking that they expected more from life than me. They just assumed that they would have money and do well. My biggest hope was just to survive.
I wondered if I could cultivate that kind of assumption in myself. Expect more. Let my eyes slide over the options that perpetuated povery and professional nothingness, and keep looking until I found options that enabled me to grow and thrive professionally and as a person.
Maybe all this is just a riff on that same issue.