Channeling Betty Sue

Someone somewhere reading this post is going to think I'm angry. Trust me; I'm not. I'm just a mom who's likely overreacting.

However.

My darling daughter called earlier this week to share with me a conversational encounter with a non-immediate family member who lives in a distant state. Said kin was passing through daughter's neck of the woods, called us to secure her digits, made the connection, and kindly treated her to dinner. She told me that, from the time they were seated at the restaurant, she intuited that this was more than a friendly I Was Just Passing Through On I-75 And Thought I'd Call To See How You're Getting Along Honey type of situation. Sure enough, before the beverage order arrived, a proposal was on the table that amounted to an offer of employment (sort of).

(I apologize for sounding covert ... I could provide you with ample minutiae to connect the dots but as the fine print is not germane to this discussion, I won't.)

What is profoundly germane is that before our relative made his case, along the lines of laying groundwork he managed to convey to our smart and beautiful girl that the personal and professional scenario he was suggesting she embrace (which by the way would have called for a comprehensive dismantling of her life as she knows it) had already been deemed (by him) far superior and ultimately beneficial to her than the life she is currently leading.

Okay ... maybe. Let's stipulate that he's a shrewd prognosticator and happens to be right about that. But then he went a hair too far: he implied that her life as she is leading it at present is of little worth to her or anyone else. That she might as well sell all she hath and follow him because as anybody with one eye and half a brain can see, what he proposes is clearly more desirable than any prospects she may have or hope to have befall her.

Hmmm ...

Have you ever just plopped down on the sofa, stared into the middle distance, and asked yourself: "Where in the sam hill do some people get their nerve?"

Well, I have. And I know the answer: at the same place where you get wholesale insensitivity, mindboggling shortsightedness, fatal cluelessness, and unmitigated gall. In bulk.

Ever notice how some people can make their (uninvited) "solutions" to your (perceived) "problems" sound like a cross between last Sunday's sermon and a juicy prayer request? And don't you just love it when that happens? When I was little and a body acted thataway, my folks said they were being nasty-nice.

This is the deal, y'all: If someone who knows (or should know) you well and who claims to care about you, starts talking to you like you're four years old and in dire need of their sage guidance on what to do, where to go, what to say, and how to be, without taking the time to be careful of your feelings, and without taking into account that you are a person of above-average intelligence (if indeed you are), rest assured of two things. One, they have an (often unspoken) agenda that is designed to benefit them far more than it does you, although they aver otherwise; and, Two, they are threatened by and/or jealous of you. Sometimes all of the above factors are at work simultaneously.

And as I advised my child, while you're wise to remain objective long enough to hear most people out, you're required to accept neither a person's patently negative assessment of your situation nor the corollary, i.e. their take on what you should "do" about it. Often mistaken for garden-variety hubris, this attitude, when carefully cultivated, can actually be a special kind of humility that has simply been smart enough to grow a businesslike tooth or two in its level head. Because as I told my lovely daughter, ultimately no one but God and you will protect your vision of your life as you hope to live it.

Speaking of teeth, although the multi-fanged vagaries of incorrigible, relentless time (and God, its creator) will eventually teach us all everything we need to know -- and then some -- there are moments when cruel time can seem like a geriatric de-clawed housecat compared to the sly judgments and helpful suggestions blithely proffered by those who insist they have only our best interests at heart. Let's not smarm around: in the same time it takes to effectively invalidate and perhaps even eviscerate someone, you have the opportunity to encourage and uplift them. And unsolicited advice, in all its guises, will never be anything but a mild form of criticism.

Be that as it may, I do believe it behooves us to cut as much slack to those who (sometimes in ignorance) piously patronize and appallingly underestimate us as we would want lent to us when we inevitably (and often equally unwittingly) cast ourselves in the role of would-be mentor. And when my sweet daughter asked what I thought about her situation, I reminded her that no one but God Almighty, and she herself, has the authority to put the quietus on her life ... the only life she'll ever have on this earth, with all its disappointments and defeats, its delights and dreams.

Comments

[Deppfest]

No, you don't sound angry, Jenny, just the concerned mother who wants the best for her daughter. She will make the right decision for her, I'm sure.

As for advice or comment, most give it for reasons of love when they see someone they care about heading in the wrong direction, but it is always up to the individual whether to take any notice or not. If you know you are in the right, then it can easily be ignored. From my own experiences, if I get rankled because of what someone has said, then there's usually a kernel of truth in it, in which case I usually (reluctantly) take it on board - but I'd rarely admit it to the person who pointed it out!

[Audrey]

Well, all I can say is "Amen". Thanks for bein in my corner, preciate ya. Extremely well written too.

[Keli]

I don't think you're overreacting. Probably because I would have reacted similarly (as moms are wont to doing). I do not appreciate criticism disguised as unsolicited advice, which this might have been. As a specialist on stupidity, I'd say it sounds like your daughter may have been taken to dinner by a stuper (short for an annoyingly stupid person). It also sounds like your daughter kept her wits about her.