Can I Handle The Truth?
Now that I have declared to my friends, family, God, and The Universe that I will not, under any circumstances, relocate my family to Calabasas, everyone is coming out of the woodwork with a resounding, “I told you so.” Friends and family members alike are saying, “I didn’t want to say anything, but what the hell were you thinking?”
My father, my rabbi, and my best friends have all breathed a sigh of relief because they knew all along that I would have lost my mind (for real) in Suburban Hell. But why didn’t anyone share these thoughts with me? Is it not their business? Maybe. Am I too headstrong to listen? Probably.
Still, I am going to make a request. In the future, if you see me getting ready to jump off a bridge, please try to stop me. I am not blaming anyone for the temporary insanity that drove me to believe that I could live in a 110 degree community where everyone looks alike and the bathroom floors are carpeted. I just ask that you tell me the truth before I make a decision that may be foolish and irreversible.
I am curious to hear other people’s thoughts. Would you be blatantly honest with a friend who was about to make a big mistake? Or would you try to support them and keep your thoughts and feelings to yourself?
May 28th, 2009 at 8:26 am
This is a really interesting point, and as this is something that happens all the time between friends, it is worth putting some thought into! I can tell you that for me personally, when I found out that you were moving to Calabasas, my first thought was “that sounds like hell”. But then I thought, maybe this is exactly what you need at this point in your life, if only to do it for a few years while your kids are small and so that you would appreciate living on the coast that much more. There have been so many times in my own life when I made a move that everyone else thought was a mistake, but I did it anyway, and even if it WAS a mistake, I learned things from it that I couldn’t have learned any other way. I think in your case, you were able to learn what you needed by going through the exercise of visiting Calabasas and seriously envisioning your life there. If your plan had been nipped in the bud by well-meaning friends, you wouldn’t have been able to prove it to yourself that you would indeed hate it there. You would have alwasy wondered if you should have listened to your friends or not. But now, you know to your core that moving to Calabasas is the wrong choice for you, because you went through the exercise of looking at houses, planning to move there, and then coming to your own conclusions. I’m not saying that friends should never offer their opinions when they know a friend is about to make a mistake, but I do think there’s something to be said for making our own mistakes sometimes, as long as that mistake isn’t going to cause permanent damage. Having said that, you have given me a new perspective on this, and I will definitely think twice the next time a friend asks for my honest opinion!