Years ago I was ranting to one of Brian's friends about how finance was taking so long to get our dislocation allowance to us after Brian filed the paperwork. We had just moved to Okinawa and the transistion was expensive. I was frustrated, irritated, and dammit I wanted our munnies!!! How dare those finance people drag their feet and not do their jobs the way that I think it should be done!!
Apparently I must have been more bitchy and obnoxious than usual, because Brian's friend just looked at me and verbally smacked me with the biggest truth we all need to get through our heads. "It's not about you. Get over yourself."
At the time I was vaguely offended. OF COURSE IT'S ABOUT ME. I need to pay these bills. I need to get these utilites hooked up. I need to get groceries. I...I...I... But then I realized he was right. We were one family in the Air Force. The Air Force alone has over 330 THOUSAND service members. The paperwork for our DLA started when Brian filed it in Okinawa, but it had a full process to go through before we got the DLA, and that process went all the way to Denver. A lot of people were involved in that process. And those people weren't just processing OUR DLA, they were handling the finances of the entire Air Force. We are one tiny drop in a big huge bucket.
Over the years since this conversation I've learned just how much the "get over yourself" needs to apply to so many other aspects of my life. If Brian comes home in a mood after not responding to any of my texts that day it doesn't have to mean that he's mad at me. He was probably in meetings all day and just needs to shut down for a while. If my teenager is hiding in her bedroom blasting her music, it's not because OHEMGEEYOU'RETHEWORSTMOMEVERIHATEYOU (OK, she's 15, that might be part of it), but because she's 15 and is just dancin' with herse-elf.
One of the biggest "get over yourself"'s is the way we expect people to take in and react to what we say or do. We are the ones in control of what comes out of our mouth. We are the ones that have to choose our words/tone/actions carefully. Yet when somebody is hurt by what is said or done, we get offended because they didn't have the clarity to understand what we were REALLY getting at. We don't think about the fact that there may be something going on in the other person's life that will color their interpretation of what we just said. Context has impact, and not everybody has the same context.
I think Carly Simon summed it up best. "You're so vain, I bet you think this song (post!) is about you..." We're all a bit narssicistic, it's inherent in human nature. We need to remember that there is so much more than what's going on in our tiny lives. And just STFU and get over it.
BTW, if you think this post was about you, it probably wasn't. But maybe it was....
