it was last october over a year ago that a once incredibly close friend flung those words at me; the phrase began with a sneer & ended with her spitting out "pla~ti~tudes."
my response took even me by surprise. instead of being upset or angry or repentant of my ways, the unexpected comment lifted a veil that long covered crucial parts of my life. in a flash, it was clear that leslie wasn't the only one irked beyond endurance by my platitudes. i'll see you a leslie & raise you a peter, mim, mike & kerry.
for many years, i've said that my sibs experience me like nails on a chalk board. i make their skin crawl. i know from kerry that my core nature disturbs her intensely - so she wrote in 1973, in a letter to mom, and i've experienced nothing over the years that would lead me to think her opinion's changed. i irritate peter so intensely, his family didn't invite me to my niece's rehearsal dinner; as my nephew put it, if i were there, his dad would have been stressed.
it was clear that something about me rubbed each of the in the absolutely worst way imaginable, but i was left clueless as to what it was.
"you & your platitudes!" eureka, i had found it! my robustly pollyanna-ish ways got under their skin every bit as much as it did leslie's. in leslie's tone (we were on the phone), even more than her words, i heard years of irritation erupting.
yes, i do tend to see a lesson in all that happens, which does liberate me in a large degree from recriminations & fault finding. yes, that could be experienced as pollyanna-ish. but what's so bad about being a pollyanna? as i recall, she lead a pretty happy life, helped others brush off paths to their own happy lives, left where she lived & who she was with in a happier place than they were before.
seems a pretty good way to be, if you ask me. so i'll forever spout those so-called "platitudes" about seeking the lesson & understanding that each of us brings a unique perspective to our common experience as i keep on keeping on!
thank you, leslie, for helping me understand the previously incomprehensible!
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