Friday, September 08, 2006

Being The Better Person...


My mom has always told me to strive to be the better person. The woman believes in total forgiveness. It doesn’t matter what garbage the other person heaps on me or what they do to me. I am expected to forgive from the heart and only when the person has been forgiven can I walk out of that person’s life if I wish to do so. I wish I could tell you that I had embraced this philosophy whole heartedly as I was growing up but then I’d be lying. I also wish I could tell you that it’s an easy lesson to learn but it’s not. You have to over come so many emotions and mind sets before you’re able to be the “better person”.

It seems like my mom has been teaching me this lesson as far back as I can remember.
I’ll give you the gist of it. Anger, hatred, jealousy well they are all negative and poisonous emotions. These emotions poison our psyche and effect our every day lives. Instead of carrying around all of these negative emotions I meditate on them on and then I approach the source of those emotions and get to work. I talk with the person, air things out and forgive them. More often than not they can’t believe I am forgiving them or that I am extending my hand in friendship to them. See the thing is this once you’ve forgiven them from your heart you do stay in their lives in one form or another because the emotion that made you want to bitch slap them is no longer there. The fact of the matter is I didn’t really understand what the heck my mother was trying to teach me until I got older and even then I’d hear my moms voice in the back of my head, “Mia be the better person .” Yesterday I had a situation where I had to be the better person and for the first time in my life it wasn’t my mom’s voice I heard it was my own.

The whole thing started months ago. My friend Angela has 2 best friends Rebecca and Margaret and they’ve been hanging out for years. Last year I came into the picture. Several weeks ago that hideous big headed bastard monster (no, not Cheney.) reared it’s head. The one thing I’d noticed was that Angela was a very submissive, affection hungry people pleaser. Because Angela was in a really crappy emotionally abusive relationship her friends looked down on her and treated her as if she were the village idiot incapable of making even the smallest decisions regarding her life. Personally I believe in empowering my female friends especially females like Angela. Often you’ll find that when they willingly take on the abuse that is heaped on them and are so ready to kiss everyone ass that they come across they lack self worth. They feel that they don’t deserve better than what is being given to them. Angela’s friends didnt approve of her life's choices. I don’t doubt that they loved her. They were displeased with her decisions in life yet I understood why her friends acted the way they did towards her, she gave them that power.


Hanging out with me seemed to affect her. I guess started rubbing off on her and my words to her during our therapy sessions had taken root. Pretty soon the boyfriend was history and she began standing up to her friends. Margaret the leader of their clique wasn’t too thrilled with Angela’s new found independence and blamed me for the change in Angela. Once upon a time Margaret found me to be exhilarating and fun and always asked that I be included in their get togethers. Now it was,“I don’t like Mia she irks me”…but was never able to say exactly what it was about me that irked her. She made it clear to Angela that I was not welcomed when the 3 of them hung out after all they were “sisters” and I was an outsider. Then it got to the point where every time she saw or talked to Angela she would denigrate me. This really upset Angela. I found the whole thing hysterical,"what are we back in junior high?” I decided for Angela’s sake I’d talk to Margaret.

When people first hang out with me they tend to underestimate me. They take my silent nature as a sign of weakness, and think that I am a push over . They don't realize that I am picking up their vibes, studying them. As they get to know me they realize that I am anything but weak and Margaret got to see this first hand. I hadn’t seen Margaret in awhile she seemed to be avoiding me. I’m sure the fact that Angela telling her that I wanted to sit down and talk to her about what was going on had nothing to do with it. I (sure it didn’t.) I even tried to get a hold of her via online . Whenever I’d log onto my messenger she’d log off. Finally I put my messenger on invisible mode and caught her ass online. I told her that I wanted to arrange and day that we could talk because I’d heard she had a lot to say about me. She denied it ….of course…and said she didn’t have time to meet in person because of her schedule…. Okay so how about we address it now since we’re both online… I can’t I just came on to check something for my boss…

I saw this was not going to be done the adult away we were going to have to settle it the internet way. I wrote her an email basically telling her that I know that this whole thing was rooted in jealousy and that she had nothing to fear in terms of me wanting to break up their friendship. She responded… with a rather mean spirited letter she even told me she wasn’t afraid of me. Which I found kind of odd considering I hadn’t threatened her or given her a reason to fear me. I shrugged it off and I responded with a beautiful satirical letter mocking her mean spiritedness. I’m sorry sometimes I just can’t help myself the smart-ass side takes over. I’m not perfect you know.

Then yesterday we bump into each other at school. The girl looked surprised. I approached her with my usual greeting…

Mia : Hey Margaret.

Her eyes darted around I guess she thought I had bought back-up with me…you know how we Bronx heads run 20 deep with our posse. She didn’t know that I was taking some classes this semester. So she assumed I had no business on campus.

Margaret : So you ummm wanna do this now or what?

Mia : Do what?

Margaret : talk , settle this. That’s why you here right?

Mia : Chick relax it ain’t that serious.I have a class. Like I said in my letter I have no beef with you I have nothing against you. If I have something to say to you I’ll say it to your face and I would’ve told you everything I wrote in the letter to your face if you hadn’t been dodging me.Look if you have a problem with me you should be woman enough to tell me to my face and not be popping crap behind my back. So here I am... what’s the problem?

Of course she had nothing to say. I smiled at her.

Mia : Don’t worry about it Margaret. I was never mad at you. I found the whole thing to be kind of funny ask Angela. If you’d gotten to know me you would have known that it takes more than kiddie crap like this to get to me.

Margaret : Mia I can understand if you don’t want to be my friend anymore.


Margaret can be intimidating because of her attitude. I approached her and gave her a hug, “relax it ain’t that serious Margaret” when I stepped away from her I could tell she was in shock, she was feeling kind of stupid. I guess she’d expected me to either cower in her presence or to come at her with my fists in the air. She didn’t expect me to be the better person.

Labels: advice

Posted by @ 3:14 PM
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