Giving In Versus Taking For Granted

So which one are you? And does the label even matter, since both feel like the path of least resistance to whoever leans on them. Some people ask why they should push back when the other side has already dug in. Others simply announce that they do what they want or they do nothing at all. The cost of that second habit sneaks up on you. A made-up mind is usually a closed one, and a closed mind quietly turns down advice it might have used.

I'm not reading anyone's thoughts here, in case that wasn't clear. But when I decide on my own course, I try to stay open to someone suggesting a different one. Sometimes the suggestion is worth taking. Nobody has the full picture of what another person is carrying. Plenty of people cave instead of making their case, and plenty more never stop to wonder whether the folks around them might want something else entirely. The wheel that squeaks is the one that gets the grease.

The fights are rarely big. Where should we eat. When do we pull over on the drive. At a family dinner you can keep most everyone happy by setting out sweet tea next to the soda and milk. If pie shows up at every gathering because the kids and the grown-ups both love it, the cake people go home with nothing, meal after meal. Some of them stop grumbling and just stop showing up, with an excuse ready each time. Other times a choice is genuinely necessary, like a pregnant woman who needs frequent stops. The rest of the time the pattern just wears thin, and people sit quiet until they've half forgotten they had any say in the first place.

There was a stretch when smokers seemed to own every room, and objecting to the smoke was treated as trampling on their freedom. The arrangement has flipped. Now it's the smoker who steps aside so others aren't breathing in secondhand fumes. I can still picture sitting in a smoke-thick room with my eyes watering, being told to just pop my contacts out. I had my glasses on.

Taking turns, or finding some middle ground, tends to work better than either side winning outright. A few smokers in my night class couldn't last the full three hours without a break, so the class got split into three roughly equal stretches with two five-minute pauses between them. These days I notice people heading outside to smoke even in houses they own.

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