How would you describe yourself to someone?
I can hear Dana in my head. She has a marvelous Stitch impression.
I’m supposed to be describing me, and this is the best I’ve got.
I’m trying to stop being nice, without losing being kind. I find that if I try and people please everyone, it’s not the flex I thought it was. People treat you to the level they see themselves, and are self-serving a lot of the time. They’ll help you if there’s something in it for them. Very few people will help someone a propos of nothing.
Those few are worth more than you have in your bank account, and I don’t care how high your balance may be. It is even truer for billionaires that they need good friends, because they have to worry about things most people don’t. What if their kid gets kidnapped? It’s very real when the kidnapper can set the release at anything he or she wants.
Most people think it’s justified, like eating the rich. That doesn’t make it right.
It’s just one example to make my point, but there are millions of others.
It is interesting that now people see that my boundaries are ironclad, they don’t test them. It doesn’t matter whether they’re scared of upsetting me, whether they think I’m being an asshole, or respecting my privacy. I am not responsible for what they understand, and they don’t live in my head. No one can predict me, because I want them to stop.
The heuristic in their heads is mild-mannered preacher’s kid who will do anything and everything not to offend anyone. I was constantly trying to figure out how people emoted and thought so that I could keep them from getting upset. I wasn’t standing for anything, I was falling for everything, and I could hear Ben Franklin telling me to stop.
It’s probably because of the summer heat in Philadelphia. I hear it is not pleasant. If you do not know how bad, you should let Jill, Lindsay and me school you. We all had to read a book about early America that focused so much on the heat during the many Congresses it took to get to ::gestures broadly at everything:: that everyone sweated and grumbled and got drunk at lunch. Now that’s how you whip a vote.
I’m betting at least some of those guys had good boundaries, but not Franklin. He became the toast of Paris trying to win the Revolutionary War with their money and resources.
At the end of the day, there’s this gem from the International Spy Museam. “Washington didn’t beat us, he simply outspied us.” It’s a paraphrase, but you get the gist. Intelligence over military might, my goal in every conflict vs. putting boots on the ground. I have too many friends in the military to think of any of them in danger. Spies save lives by having good boundaries.
The first Moscow Rule, not Tony Mendez’ explanation but he wrote them down is, “don’t fall in love with your asset.” It doesn’t mean sleeping with them (a Moscow Rule…… for RUSSIA), it means that if you don’t have boundaries, you won’t be able to protect them. it means that you’ll start wearing rose-colored glasses instead of running the numbers. it means being emotionally incapacitated to some degree, because sometimes they get caught. It’s one thing for you to go to prison or be tortured. It’s another thing to watch someone else, and it’s something you asked them to do that got them caught in the first place.
It’s a metaphor for life, or it has become that for me. I have fallen in love with the whole world, but the whole world doesn’t deserve me. It takes my focus and directs it externally, leaving me with no energy. Pushing people away is not trying to hurt them. It’s trying to say that I only have enough energy for *some* people because I have many, many, many acquaintances and readers that are not my close friends, and yet I would bleed out if they needed anything while my needs, and my family’s needs from me go by the wayside.
I think when you’re an INFJ, if you are interested in International Relations at all, you love CIA because they keep people safe. It’s one thing to have a few people steal some documents. It’s quite a different experience walking into a base in Afghanistan or Iraq and seeing how massive it is because they have to accommodate thousands (or at least hundreds…).
CIA has done some shady shit, too, but what you see is what you get. If you want to see that they’re evil, you’ve got material. If you want to see that they’re amazing, you will. It just depends on your filter. Now, extrapolate that to everyone you know. Are you capable of accommodating six friends or at least, hundreds…….. What people see in you is what people see in “the Manson family,” which is what the FBI calls them in “The Looming Tower.” It’s not a real thing. It was just funny in the show (it’s on Hulu, I think).
But of course the FBIs filters are different. They’re a law enforcement agency built on slave catchers. Who’s really the good guy in either scenario when you look at them through those filters?
Giving the important people in your life the attention they deserve means shutting others out and not feeling bad about it. No one has the energy to have 50 friends, and if they do, they don’t know all of them that well. But if you’re a people pleaser, you might cater to people you don’t know well for a while, but then you’ll get overwhelmed and give up.
It reminds me of one of my favorite hymns:
Draw us in the Spirit’s tether
for when humbly in your name
two or three are met together,
you are in the midst of them.
Now, God does not work for CIA that I’m aware of, nor do they belong to The Manson family. That’s all on us.
It’s a reminder that to have a truly spiritual experience, it can be quiet. You cannot go deep with 50 people, especially if you can’t go deep with one.
Talking to 50 people is easier than talking to one when you don’t hate small talk. Being on stage or in the pulpit/lectern is even easier. That’s because even when I’m preaching a confessional sermon with 200 people hanging on every word, I still don’t feel responsible for their actions. I don’t feel responsible for the way they feel when I’m done. I know from experience how I did. If I did well, they’ll tell me so. If I blew it, they’ll say, “I like your dress.”
“I like your dress is polite, but it doesn’t indicate someone who will show up for you.
And that leads me to a story about Mikal, my 11th grade best friend. We were on a mission trip to Reynosa, and it turns out that I, in fact, cannot preach in Spanish. But I tried.
I think it was something like “los ninos es la corazon o la iglesia” (the children are the heart of the church). That’s because I preached Sunday worship after vacation Bible school (I was the only one who could even attempt such a thing. Had nothing to do with my qualifications except two years in school that barely covered first grade. Anyway, I say a couple of things after that and then I run out of words and couldn’t really “think of a closer.” So I just repeated the above line twice and said, “Amen.” My mother cried (partially because she had no idea what I was saying) because that’s what mothers do when you preach.
I finish not really knowing how I did, because everyone was polite.
I get back to my seat and Mikal says, “that was the worst piece of crap I’ve ever heard in my life.”
And that’s why she was my best friend.
Stories That Are All True 