Photo by Cynthia Larsen
Eleven Things You Simply Need Never Do
We’d call this counter-intuitive advice but have no counter
By Ed Goldman
Today—as we fondly recall Hanukkah (which ended a few candlelit sunsets ago), bid farewell to Christmas (which collapsed of its own commercial weight at midnight Thursday) and usher in Kwanzaa (which began Friday)—it may be a propitious time to think about a few things you need never do to have a productive life.
For instance, until the previous sentence, I never had a real need to use the word “propitious” in a sentence and am pretty sure I won’t, ever again. Here are 11 other things:
Head trap
1. Send an angry email to someone in the middle of the night, during a drinking spree or shortly after a hot yoga session that was causing you groin cramps.
2. Go to the office of someone you’ve loved and respected and tell him or her that you never loved nor respected him or her–and then ask if he or she can validate your parking.
3. Storm out of a room, a home, a coffee shop, an ashram or a proctologist’s examining room because the conversation isn’t going as you’d hoped. (As an aside, conversational skills probably aren’t on the final exam for proctologists, so keep a generous heart.)
4. Make an anonymous phone call saying a bomb or soufflé is about to explode at a family gathering, the workplace or the wedding of your former spouse. This holds true whether or not you’ve actually planted the bomb or sabotaged the soufflé.
5. Make a death threat to a social media “influencer”—-or anyone for that matter, including yourself, as in, “If I don’t lose 15 pounds in time for my quincera, I’ll kill myself.” Bad idea. And if someone you love expresses the desire for you to lose that 15 pounds, your continuing to love that someone may be another bad idea, unless you’re married to a nutritionist. (Still another bad idea, while we’re on the topic).
6. You don’t ever have to win an argument with a loved one. What does victory look like, anyway?
7. You don’t have to taste a food or sip a drink that looks or smells nauseating. And you don’t have to feel bad about offending the person who coaxed you to do either of those things. And if you’re the one who was doing the coaxing, you didn’t have to do that. Did you really think that if you’d succeeded your efforts would have enhanced the other person’s life or that his or her esteem for you would have increased (“You’re such an adventurer! I wish I could be more like you!”)? Dream on.
8. You have zero obligation to leave the “recommended tip” on a restaurant tab, even if your waiter is standing there holding that little billing device (and phonily apologizing for needing to stand there waiting for you to decide on the tip amount).
9. On a somewhat similar note, you simply don’t have to reveal your plans for the rest of the day or any day just because a pushy cashier has asked you to. I’m sure this was thought up as a way for businesses to seem more sociable—if so, it was thought up by a consultant whose return address is 999 Hell.
10. There is no possible excuse to trash a business on Yelp! unless your principal aim is to keep reputation-repair firms afloat. If you had a bad experience at a restaurant, department store or auto-repair shop, you can do something much more effective and less time-consuming to express your opinion: Don’t go back there.
11. What is the net gain of telling people you supposedly love that they “disappointed” you–or, possibly worse, that they “disappoint” you? When shifted to present tense, the word becomes even less of a reaction to something that already occurred than a prediction of how you’re always going to feel, no matter how hard the “disappointer” tries.
Try to keep in mind this timeless wisdom from Confucius (no kidding): “He who expects nothing is never disappointed.” On the other hand, it might not be advisable to tell loved ones you expect nothing from them, which can not only be misinterpreted but also may leave you giftless next Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa.
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).
