If you’re looking for useful advice, you can’t get much better than “We Can Work It Out” by the Beatles.
Life is too short for fussing and fighting, they say. Who can argue with that? Ah, if only everyone took the advice of John Lennon and Paul McCartney to heart, what a world it would be!
Sorry to say, such advice is often easier said than done. We all have our quirks — those things that push our buttons.
Personally, I hate when people are critical or bossy. Fortunately, I married a guy with the same pet peeves as me. Fred and I had an unwritten pact: You don’t tell me what to do, and I won’t tell you what to do. Generally speaking, our marriage worked beautifully because of that.
Then, after he passed away, I broadened my social circle. Low and behold, I encountered people who sometimes dared to criticize me or boss me around. Not wanting to start a fight, I’d usually give offenders a killer glare and hope they’d get the message. For the most part, I tried to bite my tongue, being a conflict-avoiding hippie at heart.
However, some offenders grated on me more than others. The worst of the bunch did the unthinkable.
They shooshed me.
Yes, I know, some situations demand quiet. Maybe, if I were to gab in church or at the movies, I’d warrant one of those obnoxious hisses. But at an outdoor picnic? Nuh-unh. Anyone who dares to shoosh me in such a setting deserves my most murderous stink-eye.
A friend I’ll call Mona did just that one balmy fall day. After I greeted a fellow friend with an exuberant squeal, Mona shooshed me. I stared her down, which prompted her to stand up for herself.
“Sorry, but I have a sensitivity to loud sounds,” she said.
I bore my eyes into hers and shook my head. If looks could kill, poor Mona would be dead meat.
OK, maybe if I hadn’t grown up with parents who wanted me seen but not heard, I would have given Mona the benefit of the doubt. However, in my hierarchy of rights, her hearing issue stood way below my freedom to express myself even if I was, well, a tad boisterous.
In the back of my mind — we’re talking way, way in the most remote regions of my gray matter — I knew that a more evolved soul might have bent over backward to be kind to Mona. After all, she had followed her shooshing with a polite explanation of a physical condition.
Still, since 99% of me interpreted this encounter as a miscarriage of justice, I decided to call Mona on it. Weeks later, in the course of a text exchange about an entirely different matter, I asked her to promise never to shush me again.
“I’m sorry I hurt your feelings,” she replied. “But I have a real sensitivity in my ears.”
Oh, no, here I go again. Mona’s response triggered the angry 8-year-old in me. My scales of justice soared into the stratosphere, with me clearly in the right and her in the wrong. My heart beat like a herd of bloodthirsty beasts. Two bulls locking horns. I texted back with my fingertips on fire.
“Well, I have PTSD about being criticized or bossed around,” I fumed.
Did I really need someone in my life who felt that their idiosyncrasies counted for more than mine? Well, maybe not.
Then again, Mona had been a good friend through the years. My hand clenched the phone, waiting for the three dots signaling her reply to appear.
What happened next surprised me. Mona texted back, “Thanks for letting me know your boundaries.”
My eyes nearly popped out of my head. I let out a breath big enough to blow out a forest fire. The horns unlocked. Suddenly, I felt giddy.
“What a pair we are!” I joked.
I no longer saw her sensitivity as a challenge to mine. Now that Mona had been so open to my idiosyncrasies, I wanted to honor hers. It was one of the most positive and memorable examples of conflict resolution that I can remember.
Everyone should be so lucky to have a friend like Mona, or even better, be able to summon up the same responses. Now, whenever “We Can Work It Out” seems like an impossibility, we can force ourselves to apologize for hurting someone’s feelings and thank them for their honesty.
We can all find our own ways of putting the song’s advice into action. The possibilities are endless.
Joan Axelrod-Contrada is a writer who lives in Florence and is working on a collection of essays, “Rock On: A Baby Boomer’s Playlist for Life after Loss.” Reach her at joanaxelrodcontrada@gmail.com.