If I Wanted Your Opinion…
“Keep your two cents…my jar is full.”
Has anybody ever said this to you, or eye-rolled you the equivalent?Guilty. Not out loud, but the eye-roll is familiar to me.
This is another area in my life that needs an intervention. Or a mouth guard. Or industrial strength duct tape.
I’m sitting having breakfast with a friend in a coffee shop. She begins to unload her problems, at MY invitation. She’s called me to “vent” to a neutral party, someone who will not judge. Whose cone of silence is more legendary than “What Happens In Vegas Stays In Vegas.” Yep, I tell her, I’m your gal. Rant away.
I listen without so much as a half-batting eye.
I’m a stiff wood sounding board. Attentive and focused. Offering up a barely detectable throat clearing, a strategically inserted “ahh”, a consoling “I understand” or an in-your-face “damn straight you’re right”.
This is how a supportive and caring friend behaves.
But before she’s done, before the climax of her story is revealed — the pain point that made her ask me to listen and be a friend — my mind is racing on all cylinders.
Why?
Because I’ve got all the answers to her problems. I don’t need to hear the ending to help end her misery.
And I tell her.
Now, she never technically asked for my opinion. That’s true. But, c’mon. She was too focused on the minutia to the see the clear-as-day solutions to her problem. It’s the old forest for the trees idiom.
She hung on my every word, sipping her coffee. A nod here and there. An “I see” or “good point” in between. Not once did she interrupt me.
I finished with a flourish. Basically, go home and do this and this and that and tah-dah, problem solved.
A moment of silence…Then, the eye-roll.
It’s when I wondered if there’s a 12-step program for people like me.
“Thanks for listening,” she said, knowing her conversation was safe in the cone. “But, if I wanted your two cents, I would have asked for it.”
Guilty. Again.
Moral of the story: You are unimportant to someone’s pain that’s none of your business. Your job as a friend is to listen, shut up, pay the bill and tip your waitress well.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
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