This is my first blog from Thailand! I have been here teaching English at a school in a small village and will be for the next two months, but this blog post doesn’t have anything to do with that. Last week my friend Allie told me a story that I really want to share because it has made me rethink a lot and has taught me a lesson for the future.
My friend Allie is on a different team but we got to spend a lot of the past 2 months together because we lived in the same place. This month is the first month we are apart.
One thing I love about Allie is her love for her friends back home. She loves to talk about her friends and tell me stories of funny times her and her friends shared before the Race. Last week Allie told me a story about a time her friends pranked her by decorating her car in awful butterfly decor, decked out with a pink fuzzy steering wheel cover and everything. Her friends had put tacky stickers all over her car that made it impossible to drive down the street without being stared at and judged.
If you know Allie’s personality, you know she loves these kinds of jokes and ridiculous decor. Yet, Allie told me that when she would pass one of her guy friends from school, she would feel almost embarrassed to be driving in her obnoxiously decorated car. She told me that because of this embarrassment, she wanted to take all the decorations off to get her car back to its average look.
But here’s where this story got me: Allie kept the decor on for a long time. She told me that all of the crazy stickers and steering wheel cover made her happy and reminded her of her friends, and that if she took all of it off, she would be removing it to avoid embarrassment from others when she actually really enjoyed it. She told me that she kept it all on her car because it reminded her every day to not make decisions based on the opinions or judgement of other people, but she would now make her decisions on what made her happy. So from then on, she drove around proudly in her decorated car because it made her laugh daily and she was happier than if she would have removed it all to avoid judgement.
After Allie told me this story I sat there and just thought of all the times in my life I did something to simply avoid embarrassment or to please someone other than myself. I realized I have done just this A LOT. I think it’s pretty natural for me to want to please others, but at some points it becomes unhealthy and I put the stress of it above my own happiness.
I think about whether I am making decisions for the right reasons and for my own happiness or if I am only doing things to please others. I wanted to share this story because it has really affected me, my daily decision making, and my outlook on life in whole. I didn’t tell Allie how much this story made me think and inspired me but now she’s probably reading this, so thanks Allie!
