Life: Uninvited Interference.

I’ve been contemplating a conundrum off and on lately. Most times I forget, yet I find my way back to this situation.

A duck is hungry. A duck wanders around. A duck finds worm. A duck eats worm. Whose fault is it?

Is it the duck’s, for eating the worm? or the worm, for being eaten by the duck?

Put yourself in their shoes, if you were the duck (which in certain situations equivalent to your life’s stance, you will eventually be one day), how would you feel?

You were hungry. You chose to take action. It wasn’t easy. But you found something to reward your efforts and temporarily satisfy your hunger. Refueling you just enough to repeat the cycle. Sounds like a success story. No pain, no gain. Some days you’re out there with no worms to eat, today it paid off. If you want it, go and get it. Put in the work and the results might follow. Of course, this is very “me”-centric. If you noticed there’s zero consideration for Mr Worm.

Let’s try on the Worm’s shoes, see what we find. So, you’re gallivanting about your day, a good day in the neighborhood as other worms would say. Maybe you’re hungry. Maybe you’re tired. Maybe you’re taking a stroll through the grass. Maybe you’re trying to find an honorable shade to fend off the heat. All of a sudden a mighty shadow casts around you, before you turn, you’re picked up and made lunch with. Not so delicious a thought is it?

Again, in an equivalent situation to human life, you will metaphorically, at some point, be chewed up by people. That is if you haven’t already.

If you notice, it mattered not what Mr Worm was up to, regardless of the type of day he’s having. There was no conversation. No debate. They don’t know each other. Worm does not owe Duck anything. Yet Duck greatly inconveniences Worm.

Let’s get personal.

I was to go visit relatives, other relatives decided to drive to the same family’s house to meet for this same trip, everybody together. Make an event of it. Only, one of my cousins was bringing along her husband for introduction, which I knew not of at the time. I cared nothing for their partners, all I wanted was to enjoy this time off from my everyday life.

The house is buzzing, people everywhere, haven driven for hours, everybody tired but happy, “long time no see’s” with a lot of “how have you been’s”. Eventually, things quiet down a bit and there’s a moment of peace and relaxation, myself playing cards with some relatives. You know, laughing, junk talking, plotting and every other innuendo that comes with competitive family card playing. And, I think to myself, yes! this is what I came for. This is fun.

During this moment of pure enjoyment, comes the partner. He launches himself in front of me, wasn’t part of the game, pretty much stopping the card game and starts badgering me with questions. Keep in mind, I’ve never met the chap, have no intention of knowing the chap, least of all, not right this moment. But here he was, aggressively interrogating me, what am I to do?

I should restrain lest I judge him too harshly because now I’m realizing I actually used to do the same. Well, not with the family of a girl I was seeing but I yet did the same in my own way.

You know those moments when you see a strikingly beautiful woman across from you, or maybe she’s your waitress and for some reason now that you’ve noticed her, you cannot just go back to reading your book anymore. You cannot look away nor hold your tongue. So you launch yourself into her zone of comfort and throw up all your genuine intentions on how you’d make her exceptionally happy. Paying zero attention to the fact that she did not invite, encourage nor suggest your badging in. In the movies, it works so well, in real life she’s just waiting for her family and kids to return from the minivan parked outside. Same thing. Uninvited interference.

This would be a duck imposing on a worm, in the sense that certain people would impose on you, paying zero attention or care for what it is you have going on. We should make up a name for them, say we call them Badgers.

In applying this concept to humans, do not think of the worm as being weaker (because of size or existential hierarchy like the actual worm) but as the worm being vulnerable to the itch of the duck.

Do you know you can die somebody else’s death? No, but I’m serious. You see, a few years back, I was jollying down the road, no phone, just enjoying the ride, driving speed limit for once, and there goes this other car on the other side of the road. I’m driving straight, my light is green so I just kept enjoying myself. All of a sudden I had one of those, “No, this cannot be true” moments where the other car started drifting into the road to make a U Turn. And, all along I was thinking, “No, they couldn’t, they are about to come to their senses” unfortunately, the other driver did not come to their senses.

They just gradually, almost in slow motion, almost as though they wanted to be hit, they slid their car into the main road, their passenger and rear doors, facing the hood of my car. You see, though they had no right of way, they very well could have spun around the U Turn before I reached the intersection, but no, that would be too sensible. I swerved away and boom accident with another car. You know the best part, the cause of the accident, that driver? they rode off without a scratch. They saw there was no contact with their car, so they reversed and ran off. Their negligence successfully interrupting my otherwise peaceful ride, I had to cancel the appointment I was heading to but the duck sure reversed and moved on.

Enough about me, let’s talk about you.

Have you had people walk up to your door and just bang on the door like you owed them money, only to ask you if you want a solar panel on your roof? Yeah, same thing. Little care of whether you’re asleep or just put your baby to sleep or taking a necessary break in the bathroom.

Again, this is imposing one’s uninvited self into the life of another not so much so to disrupt but simply to satisfy one’s self having little or no interest or forethought of the other’s preference.

What do you do when you find yourself in one of these situations? The sooner you identify correctly, the easier the transition. I’m not suggesting you remain closed off where people are simply scared to approach you, neither am I advocating for a rude response when someone selfishly badges into your atmosphere with their intentions.

When you’re the badger:
Personally, having identified this behavior in myself in regards to women, I just simply do not badger anymore. I have a conversation and take it from there based on their response and how the conversation goes. Some people want you to impose on them, some are hoping you say something to them. She has to verbally or non verbally invite me over one way or another. While you might not always get it right, you know, knowing for sure who wants to talk to you, and when they want to talk, you will however, know who does not want to be bothered, and simply leave them alone. Offer but do not impose.

When someone else is badgering you:
What happens when you entertain them? Personally for me, it’s always been solely the agenda of the other person. They just throw up on you and ask to sign you up for something that’d surely be inconveniencing to you but profiting for them. And, when they’re done? You do not just go back to what you were doing before, no, that concentration you had before is gone, you can either process what’s been dumped on you, or you can try to rekindle your concentration or go do something else.

They will dump on you and then move on. They carry on their day and you’re left behind to deal with all the garbage thrown on you. Do you know, in every situation, the duck walks away? I haven’t seen one choke on a worm yet. But you know who doesn’t walk away? You guessed right.

If you find someone attempting to disrupt your environment, for me I simply tell them maybe a different time would be better, because it’s not that I don’t want to give them the comfort of conversing with a human being, it’s just that I came to this coffee shop to write and the conversation they’re trying to have is not the type of talk I generally engage in and it took so much for me to make out this time to come write and really all I care to do right now with my time is just to write. Unless, the person is in distress or it’s an emergency then of course whatever they’re going through seems more important than what I came here to do, at which point, I’d override self and listen and maybe call 911 for them.

Taking another lesson from our teachers, the Duck and Mr Worm.
There is neither a good time to eat a worm nor a bad conscience for eating a worm — from the duck’s perspective, you simply eat a worm when you eat a worm. So do not expect human badgers to take into consideration whether or not it’s a good time to disrupt your existence.

However, we know it does not end well for the worm, not because of anything they did, but simply because another animal had other plans for the worm. Disregarding whatever plans the worm had for its own life. And in a similar sense, a badger thinks they know what’s best for you at that time, which is for you to abandon whatever it is you’re doing and serve their schemes. Sounds very much like a user, a taker, an unworthy interruptor.

Stay open to conversations. Stay open to being interrupted. But remain closed off to badgers. For to be interrupted for a conversation you have no interest or desire to be in is very much like being held hostage to a situation you want no part of. In which case, you simply walk away or send them away.

A duck would only see things from the viewpoint of a duck, don’t try to convince them otherwise. Cold approach and cold calling sells a lot of books. But the good news is you have the deciding vote whether to be the worm to their situation or a fellow duck they can have a conversation with.

When a person treats you like a worm, that’s a hostage situation. When they treat you like a fellow duck, that is having a mutually beneficial, non imposing, conversation, then by all means enjoy the human contact because it takes a lot of courage to walk up to a person and strike up a conversation.

In all you do, do not be another person’s worm. It never ends well for the worm. You have within you the power to decide who you will become. It’s your choosing which opportunities would design your destiny. You owe yourself the audacity to dictate your world and prevent unwanted interferences.

Don’t allow anybody to automatically sign you up for something you do not want to do, without your consent.

For a positive state is not due to a lack of negative imposition but the driving out of negative impositions.

With Love,

Famous Steve.