Have you ever felt like a “doormat”? You know, every time you have conflict with someone you feel like it’s always you who rolls over. It’s seems to be a fairly common experience, which is surprising because if everyone feels like a doormat, then who are the apparent winners?
Well, very few according to surveys. The planets loud people are in a very small minority, but they flood everyone else with a sense of dread.
We all know who they are. They’re the people who monopolise conversations at work, home or in social settings. They are the people for whom the whole world turns around themselves and god forbid anyone who questions the axis of that world.
In most cases such people are not violent, they just tend to be articulate. And isn’t it amazing how even though we know we might be right, by the end of a tongue lashing we feel so dumped on that any contribution we might have becomes irrelevant; but not for long. After a period of quiet fuming we moan about how awful they are to other oppressed individuals.
So what to do? Nothing actually. It’s much easier to whine than to face our fears. It’s easier to roll over than to push back. And the reason it’s easier is because conflict demands work, which means emotional energy and that means growing up. So we do nothing.
I remember a thing called Transactional Analysis from my courses in therapy. I found it interesting because it considers the complexities of the parent/adult/child relationships that we carry into adult life. Too many of us constantly slip back into a child relationship with people we see as bigger or more powerful than ourselves. I have seen it in action on numerous occasions: adult bullies who are little more than big children wanting control and physically enourmous, educated men cowering under the influence of a small, boorish but articulate boss.
I wonder sometimes if we are afraid of power? Perhaps we see power as a negative aspect of human life. Indeed, if all we see is power exercised as control, then that of course will be how we perceive it and we will want to reject it. However, power is a gift of God to each of us for the pursuit of life. It is the force behind our human capacity to live well and enable others to do the same. Power is little more than energy.
If we put the energy we exert when whining about difficult people into confronting them directly, we all benefit. In that sense our personal power is used for growth – our growth and others.
There’s a proverb in the Old Testament that says, “The wise prevail through great power, and those who have knowledge muster their strength.” By choosing to face our fear we learn wisdom and in doing so our strength increases throughout life.
Becoming an adult is easy – we just get bigger. Growing up is a different story. We either choose the best life, or live under someone else’s.