“Grow up already!” Who has ever heard this expression?
And this request for maturity refers, mainly, to the ability to observe around one and correctly analyze (or read) the reality that surrounds one.
Are we always able to read the surrounding reality?
Clothes don’t walk to the washing machine alone.
We know it, we are aware that, as an inanimate element, the clothes are not going to start parading from where we left them and will enter the washing machine on its own initiative. Something so obvious makes us react and indicates that we have not left the clothes where the person issuing the verdict wanted the clothes to be.
We can then react in two different ways: or we continue leaving the clothes where they are since they have not bothered us until this point in the conversation. Or making a double reading of the expression, we take the clothes and take them to the washing machine ourselves.
The interlocutor can act in several different ways, but will surely choose one of these 2 options:
Continue leaving the clothes in the same place (and start a duel of the titans, to see who wins… Probably the clothes or the need for them). Which means not doing the laundry and not having the clothes available for later use.
Pick up the clothes, do the laundry with them, and threaten that next time they will stay where they are and not be available for later use when they need to be ready.
With which option will we learn/mature sooner? With a duel of titans and measurement of strength? Or performing the task that is not assigned to us and doing it for others? The person who has not done the agreed upon task (if you need clean clothes, take them to the place where they belong to be cleaned) will not learn if we continue to do the work for them.
This very common and daily example is one of the most conflicts usually created in homes. And like this, we have several examples, which can also be given together on the same day and in a tight concentration of time. Disagreements, discrepancies in criteria, overloading of certain family members to the detriment of others, saturation of overloaded family members, which ends in insults, irreconcilable differences…
Reading reality… Is it as easy as it seems?
Maybe if they teach us, yes. I always tell my patients who come for a consultation that they should ask for what they want. Inferring a reading of reality (the reality of the person requesting it, by the way) is a lot of assuming. He doesn’t realize, he doesn’t see that I can’t, I’m stressed and he doesn’t help me… These are comments that members of a couple make towards the other member, from mothers and fathers to children…
As I always tell you: God does not give the power of clairvoyance to everyone. If we want something, let’s ask it correctly, before reaching saturation, before reaching a point of no return that makes us shout out loud: Grow up once and for all! And turn this expression into an open war cry between the members of the conversation.
Talk later?
—
Sandra Sanchez
Registered psychologist at the Official College of Psychology of Catalonia
