Time for My Own Lunch

I have a distinct memory of being in camp, at the age of ten, and being asked which kind of sandwich I wanted: tuna fish or peanut butter and jelly. Had I been eight, there would have been no question - that was the year I insisted on taking peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school every day for lunch, come rain or shine, to the great dismay of my mother, who thought I should be more gustatorily diverse. But by ten, I was willing to eat tuna fish (also, this wasn't a school lunch - I don't remember not liking tuna; I just didn't want it in school, and I have no recollection of why not - whether I was avoiding tuna fish (and egg salad and deli), or simply liked PB&J).

So, there I was in camp, charged with the somber task of choosing between tuna and peanut butter and jelly, and in order to make my decision, I looked at my cousin to see what she wanted. To be fair, she also looked at me, but I would wager without any hesitation that I would lose the bet that we both ate my cousin's lunch preference that day.

I have thought about this incident many times over the years. Especially when I deemed it an example of a larger phenomenon. The puzzle has been figuring out the nature of that phenomenon.

I mean, I can't really call it "peer pressure." My cousin might have been tickled at the idea that we had the same preferences (as we most often truly did, then), but she certainly did nothing to dissuade me from making my own decision, or to convince me to follow her eating habits. Surely, it reflects an insecurity on my part that my own choice was less valid, somehow. But whyever would I feel that my own preferences were worth so little that I didn't even bother to think about what I might like, given my druthers?

Keep in mind that these reflections focus on a decision - or lack thereof - that took place in a few instants, without discussion. And it may well be that I am making a mountain out of molehill (having already established my tendency to follow my cousin in her ice cream choices, for example - at around the same age). But I don't think so....

Because, years later, I was a house-guest of friends who had married quite young, and recall wondering at their ability to live according to their own decisions. I was impressed by some of their less traditional choices of decor, and so on. I remember marveling that they had no qualms about doing what they wanted to do (like the camp lunch, the details I noted were mundane, and in retrospect, I find it far more remarkable that I was impressed by them than anything they actually did; they were not iconoclasts in the least). I remember identifying my wonder in the fact that I had never felt that I had the right to "do my own thing," and therefore had never bothered to think about what I might want to do, given the opportunity to choose. I'm guessing that I was twenty-four (give or take) at the time.

The irony is that I always had strong preferences of what I liked and didn't. To wit, a year of PB&J with no deviance. To wit, my outright refusal to wear clothes I didn't like (again, to the dismay of my mother; she finally (almost) learned my style - to her credit). To wit, my stubborn practice of defying the family norms when they conflicted with my own beliefs.

My malleability was never that. Not realizing that I had a right to my own preferences never meant I didn't have them - when I let myself. I wonder whether holding back from expressing them - nay, acknowledging them, and even realizing them - was a defense mechanism to avoid disappointment. Keeping myself quiet, and not just in decibel, to avoid critique. After all, when I was partial to something, I was fairly attached to my own inclination. If I didn't have a favorite, however, I couldn't be frustrated when I couldn't actualize my druthers. Nor could I be derided for it.

I wonder how much I have held myself back...by aiming for the expectations of others, instead of stopping to consider where my own propensity will take me.

Of course, I'm much stronger in this aspect of self than I have been. In my ripe old age (sic), not only do I acknowledge my preferences, but I ask myself what I do want (or try to ask, anyway). Now, the challenge is indeed bringing my desires to actuality - challenging not because so many factors are beyond human control, but simply because acknowledging wants is easier than making them happen. Not everything is a tuna fish sandwich.