The Canine Guru’s Guide to Sharing Your Balls
Steve Jobs once said, “Focusing is about saying no.”
Focusing is overrated.
Covid lockdown has taught us many things. We’ve learned we really can spend that much money on groceries each week, that the people in our homes have locust DNA, that Google is our friend when pretending to our children we are more educated than we actually are, and I’ve learned to be more dog when it comes to dealing with others.
I’m a bona fide people pleaser. This could be a contentious statement, but all mothers – in fact most women – are people pleasers in varying degrees. As a parent, you are expected to be a willing cook, cab driver, counsellor, motivator, prison warden, and occasional magician. Sure, you say no to the little guys when they tell you they want to become a drug baron or move to North Korea, but if they want to paint the garden fence with images of angry rabbits, or wear a pancake as a hat, well, why the hell not? Those are boundaries I am willing to push.
Recently, a couple of friends mentioned self-help books they’ve enjoyed that cover the very subject of boundaries and people-pleasing. Research led me to a prevailing attitude among self-helpers that, in order to be happy, we all need to practice art of saying ‘no’ more, especially in this Amazon age of instant gratification. Saying no is how we break addictive patterns, how we raise emotionally stable diplomats for children, how we lose 10lbs overnight and even how we get that job promotion five other people wanted. Hmm. I’m not so sure. My most formative adventures took place when I said ‘yes’ against my better judgement – be it abseiling down a waterfall or taking the wheel of my boyfriend’s rental car in New York, so he could film the rush-hour streets. In my nightmares, I still hear the word, “Cyclist!” screamed in my ear.
American TV titan, Shonda Rhimes has a mantra: “The very act of doing the thing that scared me, undid the fear.”
I’m in her club. Yes, this attitude has led to many, “Regrets, I’ve had a few,” solos in the shower, but mistakes are unavoidable.
Granted, not everyone wants to live with the memory of dressing like a mermaid, to stand next to Joan Rivers on the red carpet at the Oscars, screaming at Tom Hanks, “Who are you wearing?”; or of holding an overfed rat in a lonely man’s house in Norwich, while he whispers, “Careful, that one’s a biter.” (This was all done in the name of employment by the way; I’m not in the habit of crashing LA parties or hanging out in weird Fen men’s houses.) You’ve your own regrets though, right? My mother calls them, ‘pillow biters’ and they are our friends; they show us what we are made of.
There is much about life-coach Byron Katie and her contemporaries to be admired, but she advises us to say no to anything we don’t feel right about. If someone extends an invite to the cinema and you don’t want to go, there shouldn’t be an explanation. That would be a betrayal of your ‘truth’ and opens a door to further discussion. All that’s needed is, “Thank you, and no.” Well, that’s just rude. Sure, there’s no such thing as a selfless act, but doing something for others even though you don’t really want to, is not such a terrible thing. Visiting a relative or helping a colleague when you’d rather be down the pub, is surely just being a decent person? If we lived our lives in a ‘thank you, but no’ way, gangs of feral kids would roam the streets, while parents suntanned in Hawaii.
Other advice that makes me chuckle: If someone asks you to do something and you’re ‘conflicted’, create boundaries by simply asking them to put their request in an email.
Alrighty then, let’s give that a go.
My son yells up the stairs, “Hey Mum, can I have V Bucks to buy this skin? I have been waiting for it for ages, like a whole month.”
“Pop your request in an email, darling, and I’ll get back to you.”
My daughter slides into the kitchen on the newly mopped floor.
“Tell you what, let’s make an epic meal, using all the ingredients in the cupboard.”
“Let’s have a Zoom chat about that in, shall we say, half an hour?”
I’ve always thought saying yes instead no more, and letting life play out is the key to a happy existence.
Let me give you an example. At university I was in a band with my achingly cool boyfriend, Fin and his mate, Lee. We were going to be big. Move over Brand New Heavies, stand down Sinéad O’Connor because nothing compares to The Bit People. (Yes, we really named ourselves that.)
It was like a dream. My man had deep thoughts and long hair; I cradled a mic and sang in a melancholy, charity-shop-clothed voice. Then, call it what you will, lunacy or Fate stepped in and took my polyester-clad arse home for a weekend.
“So…” said my mother, in a way that meant you were going to be asked to do something embarrassing.
“I’m too old for the Pierrot outfit.”
“Oh, goodness no, nothing like that. Your Dad has written a lovely duet for the two of you.”
My fork dropped into the scrambled eggs; my moth-eaten flat cap fell on to the table.
“It’s all about a Princess leaving the kingdom. Very poignant, very apt.”
“For who, Lady Di?”
I lit a cigarette and took a long, hard drag.
“Sorry Mum, no can do.” My achingly cool boyfriend spoke through me. “I’m in a great band, best we don’t mess with the image.”
She understood my marketing logic. Yes, it was probably sensible to break my father’s heart.
“You must think of yourself first.”
We didn’t speak of it, or of anything else, in fact, for a whole month.
Then, back in the kitchen, another breakfast, another plate of scrambled eggs, both of us pretending not to be entrenched in brinkmanship. She dropped a spatula in the sink; it made and angry yet resigned thwacking sound.
“For God’s sake, why won’t you just record it? It’s not like anyone will ever hear it.”
She had a point, and I did so want to make Dad happy.
Five months later, we were on the stage of prime-time TV’s Cilla Black show, singing about how the princess needed to take her leave of the King, to half of England’s Saturday evening viewers. Blue-rinsed applause accompanied the whimper of my music career committing harakiri. But here’s the thing, I wasn’t a particularly good a singer anyway and that humiliation (because it was), also led to time with my father. We ended up touring America together.
I got to know him and I wouldn’t trade it for a Mercury Award. (Liar, liar pants on fire.) It gave me insight into what it must have been like to spend all those years on the road, only to come home to a house full of people, who had just one question on their lips. “What have you brought us?”
Each night I played the princess; he crooned to his fans. But that was just a sideshow. The real show was backstage playing backgammon right up to the moment we walked out on stage, getting to know a person, not just a parent. Often, we’d still be arguing about whether my luck had won the game, as we stepped out under the lights and switched our mics on.
Niggling away, is the knowledge that being a people pleaser has its downsides; it is an open door to those who would take advantage. I started thinking about the near misses in my career as a TV presenter. There were thankfully few powerful men who had wanted favours as a trade for success, and when they did, I managed to say no. I hate to admit this, the people pleaser in me was horrified. She argued, “You know other women who have, you should be flattered, it’s not such a big deal.” It was she who made me apologise to the wankers for not being (on the) ‘game’. The shame that followed was the first real shame I’d felt (which is pretty impressive given that I’ve worn cricket whites in a corporate video). Why hadn’t I stepped up and kneed them in the bollocks? Oh yeah, fear of getting fired.
Discussing this with Inca as we walked along the seafront, he rolled his eyes as if to say, watch and learn baby, watch and learn.
The sun was low, the wildflowers swayed in the breeze, Inca frolicked with his new ball. Through the dappled light skipped an adorable French bulldog. It seemed to be saying, ‘Hi, hi, hi! What ya doing? Looks cool? Can I have a go – ’ And Inca lost his temper. The ferocity of the telling off was shocking. I told him this at full volume, there and then, for a good few minutes. The other dog owner looked on for a while and then ran away without argument.
My dog walker, the amazing Jen Wynn had this to say of Inca’s thuggish behaviour.
“He’s just setting boundaries, Jess.”
Boundaries? What is it with this word? It seemed to be haunting me. In the car on the way home, Inca received a lecture on the merits of sharing, of saying yes to total strangers. He stared out of the window like a recalcitrant teenager. He was pretending not to hear me, just like my mother had.
The next day, another walk and another explanation for the dog as to why we women are apologetic and try to please more than men do.
“Here’s the thing, Inca, boys are raised to stand up for themselves; girls, even today, are raised with an unconscious need to be appealing, to please others, mostly men. And why? I’ll tell you why, Inca, because even now men are generally in positions of power. Girls still grow up on a planet where some women can only survive if they have the approval and charity of men, where a woman can be stoned to death for purported adultery, where a misogynist like Donald Trump got to be the leader of the Free World. Why are we not up in arms? Why are we not at quiet war over this subjugation? Some people are, like Eve Ensler (One Billion Rising) and her supporter, Thandie Newton. But we could all do more.”
Inca seemed unimpressed and trotted off to find his frisbee. I got his message; we can’t fix it all, we have to start by saying no to what’s in front of us. In Inca’s case it’s that damned French bulldog, back again for round two.
“Release the pooch from your jaws, immediately!” I yell at him.
Inca has taught me that we don’t need self-help books, we just need to be more dog. Leap into everything head-first, feel free to roll over occasionally, but when it comes to protecting yourself, turn your back on those you don’t like the look of, and, if necessary, be prepared to bite.
