Carrying Crap with You

Are there times when you walk around wondering why people don't like you, or wondering whether they like you or don't?  Are these perhaps the times when you feel the least favorable about the way things are going for you personally?  Hmmmm.  Let's think on that ...

I have friends from a variety of different spaces and eras of my life, the kind of thing that happens when you change careers periodically and have an odd assortment of interests, hobbies and pastimes.  So I value all friendships, but particularly the enduring ones.

One such fellow is a gentleman I've known for 30 years.  Although I know him directly through my barbershop singing hobby -- we were actually in four world-championship singing groups together -- our discussions and interactions over recent years have long transcended music and entertainment.

By profession, he is a private consultant in the field of communication.  He works with companies and their employees to help them communicate, internally and externally, to speak in public, to organize their message, that sort of thing.  That he is very good at it is evident by both his level of being busy and the amount of repeat business he enjoys -- clients bring him back repeatedly.

Of course, "companies" don't actually communicate; people do.  As a result, he is regularly dealing with individuals in these firms, and occasionally they approach him separately, to ask for help in their personal lives.

My friend related one such incident, when he visited my wife and me here a couple months back.  A young fellow, whom we'll call "Joe", had asked him to help work through some life issues -- as sort of a "life coach", so the term goes.  Young Joe had serious issues with various parts of his life, and seemed to have no one to help him.  He felt without friends and alone in his life.

So my friend told him this (grossness alert):  "OK, Joe, you will do this.  Every time you go to the bathroom, I want you to have a big, clear plastic bag, and collect your poop in the bag, no matter how much.  Then you will carry that bag with you through the day, wherever you go.  You meet people, you carry the bag.  You go to work or to class, you carry the bag.  Everywhere."

Naturally, "Joe" protested, thinking he was serious.  "But that will smell terrible!  No one will want to be around me!"

My friend got a very stern look on his face.  "Joe", he said, "You are already carrying a bag of poop around with you.  You just didn't realize it.  Every troubling aspect of your life, everything wrong, every failure -- you are carrying those with you when you interact with people, no different from if you had a real bag of poop.  Why do you think people don't want to be around you?"

Needless to say, "Joe" was taken aback, as he realized that people were reacting to him not as the person he was, but as the carrier of so much smelly life baggage that they simply did not want to be near him.  "I've got a lot to fix", he replied, realizing that he had a lot of crap to deal with on his own and not let it poison his interactions.

I can assure you neither my wife nor I had ever heard that story before, nor even considered such an analogy for our own lives -- or those of our friends and family.  But we have been amazed, beyond imagination, at how that simple anecdote has recurred in our lives since it was told to us.  People we know, apparently, do carry around metaphorical poop bags with them, more often than we could imagine.  The bigger the bag, the less we wanted to help them, the less we wanted to listen to them, and the less we wanted to be around them.  And the lesson was on us as well, to take care of our issues and not lead with them.

How simple is the lesson, right?  How you deal with the struggles in your life dictates whether people want to be around you, and if they're not around you, they can't help you.  We have surely had some struggles in recent years; business failure, deaths in the family, IRS audits -- but if we define our outward presence by what has happened to us, we will cease to be people anyone wants to interact with.

We are attracted to the company of people who have a positive attitude no matter what their situation my actually be -- those who set their struggles aside and deal with them on their own, who share their hopes and aspirations, and conceal the barriers and frustrations.  You know you prefer to be around such people; as the saying goes, the world doesn't want to hear about labor pains -- it just wants to see the baby.

Check your poop bags at the door.  You'll be amazed at the friends you find.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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