This week I rediscovered the magic and power of a magnificent two letter word. So small yet so powerful. Let me paint the picture of what I was feeling. I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of things on my supposed to do list. It felt like the must-do’s outweighed the want-to’s and I was just stuck. Scratch that. The must do’s had become more than the want to’s. I wonder how I got there. However I didn’t have time to stand still and wonder, because another must do was knocking on my door. Inside, all I could think was ‘’No’’. No, I do not want to do this.
It is written there very calmly but you have to compare it to a toddler in a grocery store whose parent just said no to taking home all the candy in the store. That is how badly I did not want to do a lot of things on my ‘’must-do’’ list. I started wondering why? And do I really have to? Is it important? To who? Lots of questions and no answers. At the end of the week I still do not have the answers. Which makes me wonder what it is with us needing reasons to excuse ourselves from activities? Since when is it not acceptable that we just do not want to do something? Why can’t the reason be that simple?
Why is it that when we say no it is immediately followed with ‘’because’’. Could it be that the courteous term has stuck to us. The courteous term being ‘’Excusing yourself from …’’. Is it because we use the term excuse that we have to actually come up with one? I personally feel that by doing that you’re just asking for trouble that honestly nobody wants. I mean first we have to take time to make an excuse and second we have to convince the other person of the excuse. If and when the person on the other side of the excuse finds out, they supposedly have the right to be angry as well. And there you have it, trouble.
So what I did was say utter the wonderful two letter word no. Not ‘’No, because’’, but ‘’No.’’. I’m going to need Shakespeare, Nicholas Sparks and Tupac to accurately but into words how liberated I felt immediately after. The power of saying just no lies in the fact that it will open up time to do what it is you actually want. I mean I did not invest time into making an excuse, win, I did not have to invest time in convincing the other person, win, and did not have to do an activity I did not want to do, win. Win-win-win. The toddler inside me finally hushed after all my no dealing. And guess what? Nobody asked why!
That is what baffles me the most. Now personally I wouldn’t ask why because mostly I could not bother to care. You don’t want to then you don’t want to. Fine by me. However could it really be that the entire world thinks like this as well? I sincerely doubt it, even though I do hope for it. Perhaps I got lucky. Which I am grateful for. I just can’t help but wonder what it is with society not wanting to create unnecessary trouble yet still needing a proper excuse. If there is even such a thing as a proper excuse. I say this because I can recall times when I said ‘’No.’’ and had to explain why to their satisfaction. Which brings me to another thing or maybe the same, it doesn’t matter.
Why is it that we have to keep explaining why not until the other person is satisfied with the answer? Don’t they realize that the both of us are wasting time? Precious time that neither one of us can get back. I wonder whether this is because they have to process it and us explaining till we can’t no more helps them. Also would this be the reason that we on our own, before even uttering the word no, have already come up with a so called ‘’proper’’ excuse?
Saying the wonderful two letter word ‘’No.’’ meant and means saying yes to myself. I wonder whether I just took an entire jump forward in happiness.
Love,
DCPR.
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