Push Back

 

When young and a rule is handed down from the parents, you may not agree but there is nothing you can do. They feed you and shelter you and cloth you and teach you and they rule the roost. You can have a tizzy fit or kick your feet in the air or scream, but you will not win. You do not have a say in the matter. To top it off, you may lose privileges like movie time or dessert or may be sent to solitary confinement in your bedroom incarceration. As long as you live under the roof with your parents, they are the law. You can lose you allowance, be grounded or lost access to the car keys.

Moving out and living on your own might seem a rewarding and freeing action, but there is always someone else making the rules and laying down the law. The boss tells you when you have to be at work and what you are paid. The church tells you right from wrong. The police tell you when you are driving too fast. All have consequences.

Even romantic relationships have their squabbles over who left the lid off the peanut butter jar or their underwear on the bathroom floor. The defiant ones may yell and scream and have a tizzy fit until they kiss and makeup.

Pushing back from feeling wronged takes many turns. You can write your congress representative to change a law. You can paint a poster, staple it to a stick and walk around the streets yelling. You can sit in on meetings, like the city council or the PTA, to make your opinion heard. You can debate your case only if the other side is listening. Fisticuffs doesn’t solve the issue and road rage, while perhaps releasing the anger, only increases the potential for (perhaps deadly) confrontation.

In these trying times, the popular push back is to post an offensive meme on social media. It may give a chuckle or gather more likes and responsive comments, but it doesn’t solve the problem.

Being at an age where keeping my blood pressure under control reduces my expression of anger or frustration to those things out of my control. If physically threatened, I’ll push back as a last resort. Otherwise, I can’t tell the difference between the Nightly News and skits on SNL.

 

*No one noticed the ‘pull’ handle on the ‘push’ door