as I'm laying here trying to get to sleep, for some odd reason i had a sharp memory of growing up run through my head. i grew up in portsmouth, va in a neighborhood like many others. it was a middle class black area, not in the richest and not in the poorest area of town; when middle class was truly middle class, unlike today. there were a group of us that hung out and played together, everything from touch and tackle football, baseball, basketball, video games and even built models. Sports were big and we had various levels of talent; I had middle-of-the-road sports talent as most of us played one sport or another in high school. There was Jo-Jo and Wayne, a couple of cats who were older than me, guys that you played with even though they were older and gave me a hard time being younger than they were and not as good as them. There was Vonn, a cool, soft-spoken cat who came around every-so-often who was good in baseball and Harrell who had the basketball court in the backyard and was the fun, semi-bully that you couldn't beat. I had 2 other good friends by the name of Michael and Bubba, who looking back on it were probably my best friends (although best really means 1 but anyway...). Michael didn't play sports and as i found out much later in life, was developmentally slow but i never cared because he was always a good friend to me and i hope i was just as good a friend to him. Last but not least was my man Bubba, who was a good friend because he, like me, was the youngest of the crew and most of the time brought his ball for whatever sport we played. When the crew was together, we mainly had a good time but i remember back in the day when got together and things got tight amongst us, Bubba would frequently take his ball and go home. Now as i remember, he probably had the least sports talent amongst us
but he never really got grief about it. he'd eventually come back but it was only after he left us and
went home, got his self together (i guess), got some encouragement,
forgot about it and/or realized that he missed us like I'm sure we missed
him. i often wondered why did he have to spoil the fun by getting mad and
leaving? As an adult, i now ask myself questions about all those times...was i a bad friend because i didn't stop him from leaving? why didn't i go around his house to check on him? why did he leave in the first place? why did he get mad enough to take his ball and leave? We all just played and played, with Bubba and myself losing more than the others but i never went home when i lost! Why didn't Bubba stay and keep playing like we all did? Its because he got tired of losing (or just not being able to constantly compete) and decided that "I'm not gonna stay here and take this, I will take my ball and go home", thereby ending our fun and his bad time.
I've come to realize that we as people whether old or young, are always looking for equity in any type of relationship and when we don't find it, we retreat to our "safe places", whether people are withholding that equity from us purposefully or not. We tend to assume that we are somehow being violated, or its being done intentionally...to somehow get at us for something and in turn, we penalize others for how we feel, i.e. Bubba took his ball and went home. At work, if you're not being payed the wage you feel you're worth, you get mad and feel used and under appreciated; never mind that most bosses cant pay us what we feel we are worth for our employment term. So at work now, you start to give them the effort "you think" they are paying for, which generally is less than you were doing before (not that we gave back any of the money). With your friends, if you initiate calls or text messages more than your friends do with you, do you feel "some kind of way about it" and cut back or even stop taking the initiative so you wont be doing all of the work? If your talk to your friends and you don't get the type of conversation back that you put out, are those conversations diminished?
Being that we all are different people with many different expectations and agendas, should it really be equal? Bubba didn't feel equal, even though i cant see how that was any of our doing...should he have been coddled to make him feel included? Should we have let him win so he felt like he was in a better place? Should he have stayed and just took it?
As i truly believe, the first law of nature is self-preservation and when instincts kick-in, God help who ever is on the other side of that action when we all somehow feel threatened. Do we ever stop to ask ourselves "is this being aimed at me?" "Am i being ultra-sensitive?" "Do i ever make people feel like this?" i cant help but ask myself have i taken my ball and gone home in the eyes of others? i sure as hell hope not but its a great question to ask my therapist when i see her next week.
