Why Minding Your Own Business Is Your Secret Weapon

Today, I want to talk to the people who find it difficult to look past the way people treat them, or have treated them in the past.

TIME.com

First, though, let’s talk about the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. I’m not gonna lie…The second one is better than the first one. Maybe it’s because the second film is more realistic, but the characters in this film have to deal with their pasts while pursuing futures they desire. Naturally, their individual pursuits directly conflict with their current relationships.

There are some scenes where characters are being mistreated—particularly America Ferrera’s character—that make me want to reach into the screen and pull her out of the situation. The last time I watched this movie, I came to a realization about interpersonal harm. I’ve found that people mistreat others through either insecurity or ignorance. I’m not necessarily on the train of “no one knows what they’re doing.” Some people, frankly, know exactly what they’re doing. They just don’t care enough about how it’ll affect other people. However, I’m also not on the side of the “Everyone who hurts you is doing it on purpose,” team.

Now, let’s talk about mistreatment, which is our subject today. 

As a whimsical, neurodivergent Black woman, I have been guilty of falling into both schools of thought that I mentioned above. In my defense, and in the defense of whimsical Black women everywhere, we have spent more time around people who didn’t value us than people who did, so that comes with a complex. It can make you feel like you don’t belong anywhere if you stay in the same place for too long. It can make you feel like you have to do certain things in order to find that feeling of belonging—dress in ways you wouldn’t normally or say things you wouldn’t normally say.

Property of Seventeen Magazine

When I was younger, I thought “belonging” meant learning to validate myself based on how other people perceived me, because their reality became my reality. It’s true: Your life gets “better” once you are perceived as someone who belongs. People listen to you when you speak. They don’t talk over you. They even ask you for your opinion. When I was that age, my muses were celebrities. All of the extremely famous Black girls I knew of either had to be extremely sexy or extremely powerful. Yet, I couldn’t relate to them. Sometimes I just wanted to be light, airy, and fairy-like. But if I couldn’t relate to the Black women on my screen, where was I going to belong?

Nowadays, I feel differently. However, the world hasn’t changed much. 

I remember a casting director who looked me in the eye, stared deep into my soul, and whispered a secret that the both of us mutually understood:

“Black women aren’t allowed to be soft. We aren’t allowed to be gentle or delicate. The industry hasn’t caught up with real life yet.”

This person wasn’t saying this to discourage me. They were saying it to let me know that if I wanted to take up space here, I needed to prepare to take a different route than my predecessors. 

And, reader, that’s what I’m telling you right now.

If you’re going to “belong,” you’re going to have to stand out. The people who are going to appreciate you won’t know where to find you otherwise.

Now, I want you to understand something. Once you stand out, many people will take notice, but not all those people will care about you. Some of them will want to mock you or discourage you. I quickly learned that being “whimsical” isn’t something you can be without being perceived as incompetent or stupid. I’ve decided that I’m okay with that. Unfortunately, attention is not care. It’s not consideration, either. Everyone who notices you is not going to inherently consider you, and it’s not your job to convince them that they should.

If you can relate to not being “considered” at some point in your life, I want you to know something—You’re not a loser. If you give a 9-karat ring to a baby, that baby is going to try to eat it. It’s what babies do. And that baby isn’t “bad.” It’s just a baby. It values different things than an adult would, so it’s going to make different choices. That baby is on its own journey, and the 9-karat ring is still valuable.

(If it helps to replace the baby with a swan in this analogy, the adult with a wolf, and the diamond ring with a steak in order to emphasize equal value, then do that.) 

Here’s a question for you that I think may be difficult to answer if you are someone conditioned to believe people choose you based on your actions alone:

What if you getting hurt has very little to do with the choices you make? What if it’s truly not under your control?

A lot of us, especially if we are marginalized in some way, get fed the lie that if we behave well enough….If we look professional enough, speak properly enough, trust the right people, buy the right properties, get the right degrees….then we avoid the way other people’s perceptions can impact our well-being. Unfortunately, this isn’t true. And when you live long enough to know this isn’t true, it’s easy to feel lost. We think: But I did everything right. How could I have gotten hurt if I did everything right? For those of us who didn’t do everything right, we think: I deserved this punishment because I didn’t do everything right. Other people don’t get hurt because they do everything right. Neither of these concessions are true.

So, reader, I leave with this notion to replace the old one: Minding your business will allow you to grow into the places you’re supposed to be. You will end up in the right environment when you stay true to yourself. You will learn every version of yourself and you will hug them tightly when someone disappoints you. You will do that because you are strong. You will allow yourself to feel everything because you know shame has no place to reside where healing is. You will hear that menacing voice and you'll know that it doesn’t speak the truth. You will stare in the face of that danger—that danger of proving to yourself all of your worst fears about who you think you are—and you'll tell that danger to find someone else to bother.

So, get some grit, my love. In other words…

Mind. Your. Whimsical. Business.

-CM