Today at PLC we talked about family. Specifically we talked about family members who would never find out if we WON BIG. Three of us were in this conversation and each of us had at least one family member who was a “taker”, to put it kindly.
I had a relative who actually said to me, “What is mine is mine and what’s yours is mine too.” This person said it as a joke. But their behavior made it clear it was not a joke at all. I am reminded of a 20th Century European queen. Being 20th Century and European narrows it down quite a bit, but I’ll leave it to you to figure out who she was. Anyway, she would admire something while visiting someone’s home and then would not leave until it was “graciously offered” to her. My relative apparently knew of this trick. I fell for it only once. After that, when they came for lunch I put out tacky stuff, planned on serving them supper and offered to make a bed up when night came. I did that twice. Then they got the picture. Or didn’t get it as the case was.
And more than once this person would drop by the office needing gas money – as if I was an ATM. Again, more than once, but not more than twice. I soon learned not to ever let this person know when my income increased or when I received anything extra in any form.
But I know for sure and for true, if this relative knew I WON BIG, or even if I won small, they would have showed up with “a handful of gimme, and a mouth full of much obliged”.
If I go by the conversation I had with the other two people at PLC, I am not alone. One of them said a relative told them that because he had bought a new car he obviously had the money to help them with the rent – not rent on a place they shared, but rent on this person’s separate home.
What do you do with a person or a relative like that? You can eliminate friends like that from your life. Because, let’s face it, they aren’t really friends.
Family – that’s another issue. It is possible to eliminate family members from every-day life, but they are still family. One way or another, they must be dealt with. We are stuck with family.
I would want to be generous with my family and friends. I would want to share my bounty. I would feel guilty if I didn’t share. But being emotionally coerced only makes me angry. And allowing takers to continue to take is not good for them either. They just continue to manipulate and use people.
As hard as it would be to do, I want to think I would do my best to keep them in the dark and find some way to deal with the guilt.
This is easy for me to say because I have not WON BIG and probably won’t ever WIN BIG. It is easy to be brave when you aren’t being tested.
If the BIG WIN comes my way, I’ll let you know if I pass the “keep them in ignorance” test or not.