Hi. My name is Elisabeth and I want everyone to be happy with me. All the time.
I want to be liked. I want to be understood. I want to avoid any and all conflict. Forever.
But here’s the truth. Not everyone likes me. In fact, I know of a few people that deeply, intensely dislike me. Not everyone understands me, not everyone can live at peace with me.
I recently had a negative interaction with someone who does not like me. Thankfully, I ended up being able to process my emotions fairly quickly by having a phone conversation with John in which, just before we hung up, he reminded me: You’re a juicy, ripe mango.
Why is he calling me a mango, you might ask? Because of this quote which has become a bit of a mantra for me over the last few months. I read it in Gracie Gold’s memoir (Outofshapeworthlessloser):
Imagine, my psychologist said, that you are the most beautifully-colored, luscious, ripe, flavorful, superior-grade mango that was ever plucked from a tree. You could be a mango larger and lovelier and more delicious than any other elsewhere in the world and it won’t matter to some people. To those who don’t like the taste of mangoes or are put off by their texture, you will be outright rejected for no reason other than mangoes aren’t their jam.
I am a mango. (You might be too.) Some people don’t like mangoes. No matter how hard I try, I am not going to become a watermelon or a peach or an apple. I am a mango. No matter how hard I try, someone who dislikes mangoes is very, very unlikely to suddenly start liking mangos.
This perspective has been extremely helpful for me (I even sent the quote to my therapist because I thought it might be something that would be useful for other clients), so I wanted to share it here, too.
Some of us are mangoes and some people – for a variety of reasons – don’t like mangoes. And sometimes there is literally nothing we can do about it.
Except live life as a juicy, ripe mango.
Your turn. Do you like mangoes (I’m back to talking about fruit here, not me!)? What’s your favourite fruit? Does conflict stress you out? If so, what’s your go-to strategy to handle contentious situations? Any recent mantra you’re finding especially helpful?
Header photo by Julia Zyablova on Unsplash
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Cattis
Oh yes, conflict stresses me out but I never back down from it. Better to grab the bull by the horns… if I don’t take on a conflict it weighs me down and messes with my selfconfidence. I always want to get to the bottom of things and understand why things happened etc. but have learned to let go of certain topics and even people. To be able to live a life true to my values and with healthy boundaries it takes conflict to get there (at least when your relatives are mentally unfit and used to beeing able to manipulate people). Not everyone likes it when you change or hold on to your belives. My favourite quote during such times is: ”don’t wrestle with pigs, because you’ll get dirty. And they like that.” 🐷 love both pigs and that quote