“Brand New” Vantage Point

Yoko Ono's A Hole

        There comes a time in everyone’s life when they will get asked, “What’s up with the change?” or “Why’re you acting brand new?”, to which you should reply, “Define brand new” or “From who’s stand point?”.

        I say this because, often times, vantage point can make a world of difference. John Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono (sp), did an amazing piece of artwork where she does a bullet hole through a glass pane. She makes you look at the glass from both sides so that you can see if you are the shooter or the one shot. She said, “Unfortunately, I was on the bad side”. I can bet my soul I know which side she would have rather been on if she had a choice in the matter. But this artwork is a symbol of life and life’s vantage point.

        Recently, while on a vacation with someone who I deemed friend, I watched the vantage point change. And although it was rather subtle at first, I started to notice her behave “brand new”, or at least it seemed that way to me. But was that bad? Well, this morning on Twitter @SimplySandraG  said, “Someone asked me why I was acting brand new & in response I asked them why are they still acting the same.” Which made me think….is acting brand new always a bad thing, or can it be a good thing? And I think it depends on what that new behavior is and how it is executed.

        For example, If you are a hoe on land… I’m pretty sure you will be a hoe at sea.  Not calling anyone a hoe, used term for dramatic effect. But if the condom fits….wear it. There is no switch in that unless you get hit with the Holy Ghost and change your ways before departing the port. But is there really brand new behavior or is it that the revealing of such behavior is deemed incorrect for the current situation? Like the kid who jumps on furniture at home and then the parents pretend to be outraged in public pretending that they’ve never seen their children do this before. I say this because, there are always signs of a person’s behavior, but maybe the situation lends for it to be okay, therefore causing the person to become accustomed to executing such behavior. Thus, when the environment changes, the one who is more keen to changing does so while the other person keeps doing the same behavior and is therefore deemed as “acting brand new”. Confused? I’ll explain further.

        If you have a friend who can NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVER be on time to save their life unless they are representing themselves, their business, or their family and can NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVER respect the time of others (those deemed friends)….then how can you expect them to change when stepping outside of those guidelines just because the environment changes? If everyone caters to such rude and inconsiderate behaviors by changing their arrival times, joking that they know this person is never on time, or re-routing caravans to cater to this person….you can only expect that this person will get use to being catered to and that this behavior is acceptable. You can also believe that the minute someone is smart enough to stop enabling this type of behavior the Tardy for the Party person will inevitably get defensive and think that you have a problem with them because, after all, they deserved to be catered to at all times…. right? So EVEN if they spend 4 nights of a cruise in the stateroom with 2 guys that they just met 3 days earlier (the first night being your birthday night, despite whatever the circumstances may be)……you should be perfectly okay with such “brand new” behavior, right? And even if they hand your stateroom key to a complete male stranger ( 3 days does not a friend & trust factors make) to come check on you in your room because you went missing and they didn’t feel the need to get out of the bed from snuggling with their new cruise guy….you should be perfectly okay with such “brand new” behaviors…right? I mean, after all, you’re the one that is remaining the same, right? Or are they the ones who are remaining the same and you are changing because common sense tells you to do better and therefore your change is making someone else look as if they are acting “brand new”?

*Side note*: THE GIVING OF THE STATEROOM KEY TO A STRANGER BECAUSE YOU TRUST TOO MANY GOT DAMN PEOPLE FAR TOO SOON AND ESPECIALLY IF THEY HAVE A PENIS>>>>IS ENOUGH TO GET YOU FUCKED UP! I DONT SUGGEST THAT ANYONE EVER TRY THIS WHILE ON A CRUISE! USE SOME COMMON SENSE ,PEOPLE! THAT’S ALL I’M ASKING! COMMON SENSE!!!!

        If you are confused by this… so am I. lol. But perhaps the environment is what has changed, and both parties are remaining true to their character ( or lack there of) and therefore both parties feel as if the other has changed, when in fact….. they havent. For instance, if 2 people sit in the dark at midnight and one ( due to the dark) appears to have a black shirt on but as the sun rises (environment change) now appears to have on a purple shirt…. did the person really change or did the environment change causing the appearance of change? Meaning, that person hasn’t changed and neither have you… the sun has finally shifted therefore revealing to you something that has been there all along and you are just now seeing it.  Like the time I was starting up my own sisterhood, when my top divas (Vice President, Secretary, Event Planner, etc) all saw the new recruits misbehaving, slacking on turning in assignments, and even watched me put them in check. When I dismissed a recruit for not following the rules or carrying their weight, my top divas were right behind me….agreeing with every step & damn near virtually hi-fiving me for getting rid of dead weight. I didn’t cater to anyone; if you didn’t carry your weight you had to bounce. But ooooooooh no! As soon as they started slacking on assignments and not pulling their weight, they had to go. Of course it came up that I had changed.  When in fact, I had been the same person, upholding the same standards, and not the only difference had been who was being punished for falling below those standards. They had encouraged my behavior, they told me that I was doing good when I saw a wrong and went to fix it ( I wasnt always the most tactful, I admit but the job got done) So you see, I had not changed, the vantage point did, the environment had changed. So, do you get mad at the person, the behavior, or the environment?

        I say blame yourself for not noticing. lol. We often push our better judgement to the side when dealing with so-called friends. We must STOP that. We must hold our friends to the same standards as we do for strangers since those closest to us can screw us over faster than those furthest from us. If your friend doesn’t curse in front of their parents but does at a bar….that person curses. Point. Blank. Period.  If this person has bad judgement when it comes to men at home, taking a trip isn’t going to change it. Point. Blank. Period. If your friend is quick-tempered and ready to beat anyone’s ass back home, I suggest you don’t try to come out the side of your neck via text messages during the holiday season…..because you can still get that ass whooped! POINT! BLANK!PERIOD!!! It is an evolution of changing environments and we already possess those behaviors that will be revealed upon entering such situations. It is up to us to pay more attention to others sooner. Hold ourselves accountable for our own actions; be they wrong or right, new or old. And we must not be willing to accept poor behavior from ANYONE at ANY TIME that does not show full respect to us and our situation. Now, go ahead…insert this rule into your life, and watch the ones you’ve been catering to for far too long say that you’re “acting brand new”.  Then….agree with them.

Sincerely,

~*My Mother’s Daughter*~

Fed Up, But Not Full

        Life is like your own personal restaurant; you have your waiters, your menus, the decor, your specialties, your maître d’ , reservations, and your policy to refuse service to anyone, at any time.  I know this may be a stretch, but please entertain my inner fat girl for a moment, will ya. When you walk into a restaurant you have chosen that place based on your own appetite, and people who enter your restaurant will have chosen it (you) because of their appetite…basically, what they had a taste for. So stop and ask yourself what is your appetite and what type of people are you attracting based on what they assume your flavor to be. What are you offering? What does your menu say about you? If your menu claims that you are not a jump off , do not allow a customer to come into your space and request jump off tendencies and you comply with their request. That’s like you walking into a Muslim establishment and requesting pork or an Indian ( non-American) establishment and requesting beef…..it just wont happen! This is your restaurant… YOU MAKE THE MENU….either they like it or they can hit the road and go to McDonalds with the other 1 billion served. You can’t expect Burger King to make filet mignon properly, so don’t go misrepresenting yourself in someone else’s restaurant and expect to get something different from what they are offering either…..wait around a while and seek out all of your menu options until you settle on what you want to have for dinner. The best restaurants in the world have a waiting list, people sometimes wait for months to dine for a few hours…..so if they are willing to do this for literal food, why does it seem impossible to make someone wait for your metaphorical food? Real food will eventually spoil and yet we put more value on it than ourselves. Sounds bizarre once you put it that way, right? Suppose someone comes into a restaurant and starts misbehaving and causing a ruckus, you better believe that they will be asked to leave as not to disturb the other customers. When people come into your personal restaurant and start misbehaving, you must immediately ask them to leave as not to disturb the rest of your being…..it is all the same principle. And the basis of a restaurant is to eat, break bread, socialize, and have a good time. If the service is poor, you dont tip. If the dishes are dirty, you ask for new ones, if the food is horrible you leave, but most importantly…..when you are full……you leave. But do the rules still apply with every other aspect of life?

        For instance, if you read my “Advice from the Other Woman” blog entry you would know that I have some weird situations in my life that I couldn’t make up if I tried. The wife in that episode would sometimes ask me how I handled her husband, my then ex-boyfriend, when it came to some of his ways. The question would pop up of “what should I do” and I would immediately retreat. First off…. as mentioned in the aforementioned blog entry…..you dont ask any other woman, ESPECIALLY his ex, what you should do when dealing with your man. I would tell her that it was not my place to answer, because if I knew what to do with him then I would still be with him, so my advice is now void. She would then follow-up with “I’m so tired of this” or “I’ve had it up to here, I’m fed up”, to which I would reply “But you’re not full”.  A simple statement that meant sooooooooo much more than most people could ever imagine.

        If she were indeed fed up, she would be telling me this from her new apartment, from the divorce court while filing her papers to the tune of Usher on repeat through Bose headphones, or while tapping into her inner Angela Bassett as she lit a cigarette and threw the match into the passenger seat of his Denali, but instead she was sitting there asking me for advice.  I say this because he was doing all of his dirt for years!!!!! She knew how he was BEFORE they got married, she knew of me BEFORE she got married, and some how, something convinced her to say ” I do”. Now I am not in their marriage like that any more, have no clue what the hell is going on now, so I send great prayers to their marriage as it now is and pray that it is the beautiful union that God intended.  But one has to wonder…..wouldn’t all of this have been enough? Him getting a woman pregnant before you got married but were still together wasnt enough? I say, no.  As a woman, in general, and having been his woman… I understood what she was going through but her path was intended to go further than mine, I just knew for a FACT that I was full. She was still eating and complaining about the flavor of her current meal. She would send it back to the chef & tell him to fix it and then bring it back to her table the way she liked, but she wouldn’t leave the restaurant. She was still willing to eat. This was the restaurant that she had chosen, and then decided that she would rather complain than choose a different spot.

        It doesn’t just apply to relationships with a lover. This applies to the person who keeps loaning money to people and then getting upset when they don’t get the money back. Or the girl who pays for her older siblings’ rent just so her parents wont have to pay because she feels obligated…even though it is NOT her battle. Or the girl who keeps getting her ass whooped on a daily basis but wont leave the man who beats her but refuses to leave. Or the guy who doesn’t want to pay child support but wont wear a condom. It is a cycle of responsibility that each scenario holds that each party must accept before they can get out of it. Stop eating at a restaurant that does not match your palette and then proceed to complain about it. JUST DONT GO!!!

        You can’t expect the food that you allow to be served to your table to taste differently just because you keep sending it back to the kitchen. If the chef is digging in his ass without gloves and then proceeds to create your meal, no matter how many times you send it back….until he washes he hands or the kitchen gets a new cook…..it will always put a bad taste in your mouth. All of the examples that I gave were the equivalent of a person eating an appetizer and then claiming to be full. They eat their delicious calamari and drink glasses upon glasses of their beverage of choice just to exclaim, “I’m stuffed”, before the entre has even hit the oven in the kitchen. Yet, and still, they sit back rubbing their bellies discussing the meal they just had (whether good or bad) and then become distracted by other conversations as they wait for what is next to come. And true to “your eyes are bigger than your stomach” form, upon the main course hitting the table….they dig in, as if it is expected, despite what their stomach is telling them. But I thought you were stuffed. Maybe my definition of stuffed is rather different. When I am stuffed I immediately ask for my doggy bag (suitcase) pack everything up nice and neat, pay my final obligation, leave a tip based on my judgement of service, and I LEAVE. A simple principle.

        This principle has become one of my personal and favorite protective mechanisms. Once I have had enough….I’ve had enough! And sitting there, allowing more time to pass for the previous bullshit to digest so that you may stuff more bullshit in its place is one of the dumbest things that I have ever heard. So I employ you to search your present plate and ask questions. What is on your plate today that doesn’t leave a good taste in your mouth? What are you running out of space for? Are you just fed up or are you truly full? Is full your final answer? If so, back away from the table and politely excuse yourself. Your mental waistline will thank you later.  Dessert will be served in the form of contentment and emotional stability and peace. I promise. Bon appetit!

Sincerely,

~*My Mother’s Daughter*~