Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock
Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005: In contemporary language, we Americans say we love take-charge people, yet we resent controlling people.
Are people one thing at home and another at work? This approaches Walter Mitty. Let’s think, no, people are as they are all the way through. Except that the worldly leader may not want to work at home. Except that the mousy worker-bee takes out her frustration with vehemence, at home.
Does that make the leader meek at home? No, just less concerned domestically. Does that make the mouse at home a tyrant? No, just unpleasant.
Slightly friendly with this couple. One is a consultant so people come to his office (not an on-site expert). Yet his chief hobby is as an amateur actor. Show-off, right? Well, he takes the minor roles, the character bits. He’s never the lead, whether by his intent or the casting directors’ choices over the years, I don’t know. We don’t know them that well.
His spouse is a division supervisor. Unexpectedly quiet, still authoritative yet wonderfully tactful about going about managing, though with an occasionally cutting wit, if you listen closely to her soft voice. Is she an effective boss? Probably, she’s been in charge for years, but in any business that doesn’t necessarily indicate success.
Who is who?
Which is not to say that fully passive personalities or take-charge megalomaniacs do not exist. It is to say reassuringly that most of us are yin and yang in varying degrees. What’s interesting to me is to observe the talker, the one making the observations. (I am making the observations? No, observing the various observers.)
When a young woman breaks off a romance, saying the other is “so controlling,” we should wonder more about her point than what a jerk he might be. She likely fears the direction her life is going overall, not that he decides whether this is a night out, or in. He’s just not the right one.
When an older man finally splits off, saying he’s tired of making all the decisions, what of the mate? We can’t fully know that from him so let’s consider him. He says he’s sick of choosing what show to watch or where to eat. The big deal must lie elsewhere. These are minor decisions, inconsequential. It cannot matter whether tonight it’s Enrico’s or Pizza Inn, Leno or Letterman. His fatigue isn’t from day-to-day decisions, it’s from foreseeing years down the line. (The above are attempts at hypotheticals.)
We’re all controlling; we all like to have our way. Growing up means learning to live with not always winning and most events don’t need our voice. Conversely, we all love to be pampered. We savor the relief when someone else makes the choices. Being an adult means learning such leisure is short-term, that it would lose its wonder if permanent, and, most of all, reciprocity is its own reward.
It’s amazing how old some immature people are who don’t get that.
