I would Prefer Not...

So I think I have given myself way too much freedom with my Friday post, because I am always at a loss for what to write. Like I will literally say, “Oh that would be an awesome post! I will totally write about [insert whatever I am thinking at a random time]!”

And what comes of it…me being stuck with what to write about, which funny enough makes me remember a time during my freshman year of college.

I attended Otterbein College for a year and it was so much fun and I learned a lot about myself and also in the way of education. But I had that was called Intro to Literary Imagination or aka Intro class to the English Major where we read a lot of books in 10 weeks and had a number of papers and a project. I appreciated the class, not as much as I appreciate the lessons I learned from reflecting on it, but it was interesting.

The very first piece of literature we read that quarter was a novella by Herman Melville, so I initially dreaded reading it.  My last experience with Melville was horrible. I had to read Moby Dick for honors English my junior year of high school and hated Melville’s writing style.

I get people love Melville’s Moby Dick but I am not one of them. I respect you if you love it, but you could not pay me enough to read that novel again.

So having this as my background I was not looking forward to Bartleby the Scrivener. During the actual time I took the class, I was very impartial to the book. I personally didn’t like Bartleby (he was lazy) nor did I like the narrator (he was a wimp). And Bartleby only said the same thing over and over again (“I would prefer not”.).

Now fast-forward 3 years:

I am in my senior year of college and in my last semester.  I am working really hard and trying to impress my professors and trying to find a career. I was putting all this pressure on myself to try to live up to the expectations of others or what I thought was the expectations of others. It was not a good thing. Seriously, just look at a post I did last year entitled “Total Panic.”

It was during this time that this simple and once annoying phrase came into my head. A professor and I were discussing a project and the thought that luckily did not come out of my mouth reached the top of my mind. I would prefer not.

Bartleby wasn’t lazy, he was just sick of it all! He was tired of these stupid standards that don’t actually make any sense or just how some people wield power over you. I had experienced too many people acting like I was just this little peon and I just preferred not to do what they said. I preferred not to live up to their standards and live up to my own.

Now fast-forward to now:

Living up to my expectations has been great and has pushed me to think in different ways.  I’m not saying that it has been easy, but it has been great to just have to appease myself and not others. I am not saying that I am thinking selfishly, but just not living up to other people’s expectations because if I am not happy with life, then I am doing something wrong.

So let just say it together: I would prefer not.

It’s not saying no, but it is stating that you would rather be doing something other than what they have for you to do. Maybe this phrase will work for you as it did for me and give me the understanding to strive for my own goals and not being programmed to not be able to think for myself.