i was who i am. CLAREGISELLE

I will never again doubt Florence's vocal skills.

art is a bit stupid

get on this podcast, brothers and sisters!

Oh the wisdom of Lily’s philosophical neighbour.

My best friend Lily lives at Ormond College on campus of the University of Melbourne. She’s been there for about a year and a half now. She loves it. And although I sometimes miss her terribly, we have found that our phone calls to one another have been pockets of pure joy. We both know each other so well and love sharing our lives together. This morning was one such moment.

I was walking my pooch, Kuta back from an early morning coffee with a friend and, as is usually, I felt a sudden strong urge to chat to Lil. We had our usually 15 minutes of silly banter about uni, exams, snobby Cottesloe fair etc-etc! Then we got onto the serious stuff. This morning Lily had some seriously gold wisdom to share. She’d gleaned said wisdom from a philosophical friend who lives in the neighbouring room to hers at Ormond. Don’t ask me how we got onto this topic but it was pertaining to rejection.

Many girls and guys alike fear rejection. It’s the elephant in the room, the boogie man under your bed, the thing that your parents always remind you that you’re not doing. That small fear and ever waiting presence called rejection. We are all, for whatever reason, scared of being rejected by something or someone because we have tied up our hope and security in it/them and when that security isn’t met the way we want it to be, we feel depleted. I think the fear of rejection can put pressure on relationships, friendships and even beginning one of the two in the first place. Fear of rejection comes from insecurities about ourselves, past experiences that have left us distrusting, fear of embarrassment and I could go on.

There is just one problem though with that assumption. The problem being that many see rejection as something to be avoided, something nasty, something that means, ‘I am nothing if that person, that company, this university course doesn’t want me’. Lily suggested that this assumption isn’t entirely correct.

“I don’t understand why we are all so afraid of being rejected?” her neighbour said to her one night, “Rejection is rarely malicious, it just means that in that moment, at that minute in time and based on a number of random assumptions, you and a person are not going to work out. That’s all. It’s only as personal as we make it.” 

Needless to say, Lily and I were both a little struck with this wisdom. Its strange, I’d imagine if anyone is reading this now, they’d most likely say, ‘Yeah duh, who didn’t know that.’ But I’d hazard a guess than despite this angle not being new, we most certainly don’t live our lives like its true. Girls everywhere are terrified about getting into other relationships because they’ve been so badly hurt by previous ones. Guys are scared of making the first move because there’s a chance the girl won’t say yes. People all over the world are afraid of trying out for that job, that team, that opportunity because the fear of not being received well far outweighs the chance of a missed opportunity. The value we place on this kind of achievement is astounding. The obvious question may be, ‘Well then is it wrong to care so much about failing or being rejected?’ No, I think we can’t help that. It’s natural. We should care what people think of us, especially if they’re the right people like our close friends and our families but not to the extent that we vilify anyone who doesn’t think the sun shines out of our butts.

The point where this becomes unhealthy and sad is when we fall out with our friends, we place high expectations on our relationships and when we fall completely apart when someone (for a myriad of reasons of which a surprising amount may have nothing to do with you) doesn’t want to have a drink with you.

Do we really think when someone turns you down for that job they’re trying to hurt you? Hell no! We are so quick to take things personally that it bespeaks of a kind of narcissism that fails to see anyone else’s views or reason above our own.

And I’m preaching to myself here. By adopting an attitude of not being afraid and not making things out of our control personal, we could save ourselves a lot of hurt and care about other people more at the same time. There’s so much to say on this topic. The more I think Lily’s neighbours realisation through, the more light it sheds on situations that I could make no sense of.

Food for thought.