The most powerful word to get comfortable with as an adult is no. My final act of saving myself from evaporation was grasping a mighty NO! I found my no much too late in life. Somewhere as a kid, I confused saying yes with being a good person and saying no as a bad person. Maybe I was hoping to be obedient, loyal, and compliant so from my viewpoint a no was always wrong. My acquisition of no had consequences to all of my imbalanced relationships. They were sacrificed on the altar of NO. My no shattered my first life but it was better to shatter that life before that world shattered me. I mistakenly concluded that no was selfish, that no was wrong or that no was un-Godly. The reality was that using an uncontrolled yes constantly violated all of my self-preserving instincts that no confirmed. Using NO early and often cements the boundaries that each person has to exercise for self protection. Putting yourself on the yes train teaches everyone around you to expect your last drop of devotion even if that means the yes person is rendered an empty husk. The extractors of the yes at all cost folks are mystified when the train slows down to stop at NO town. A simple no can revive pangs of freedom in a suffocating system. A no starts to create chaos in the Yes universe. The yes person has silently been seeking an advocate that will voluntarily restrain themselves telling the Yes person, “you should say no.” But the advocate never arrives so in a desperate final act of independence I sounded my “barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” (Whitman -Song of Myself). Consequences come from saying the barbaric NO! In 2024 the word of the year for me is NO! I am still waiting for the advocate but my no is stronger each year. Is 2025 a year of No for you?
Albert R. Hartley