How do you react when half of the group you’re travelling with stops for photos every 2 minutes and then blames you — the itinerary-maker — for being behind schedule? Or when one of them buys more food for one meal than they’d normally eat in a day out of greed just because they know the collective food bill gets split 6 ways evenly?
How about when a 15 year old in a 50 year old’s body makes excessive demands he expects you to fulfil out of respect? Or when you get pointed fingers at when a decision you made doesn’t quite work out, while everyone else is so indecisive that your hair would turn grey waiting for them if you didn’t take charge?
Maybe this is an easier one: what do you do when your mom decides you guys need to stop to eat right before the shrine you came half an hour out of your way to see is near closing time on your last night in the city, meaning you later have to half-jog up a hill to see it while tourists are coming back down all around you and you’re wondering whether they’re even still letting people in?
How do you get used to going from being the child to suddenly being the adult in a group of (mostly) much older adults, trying your best to figure things out for the whole group but somehow being expected to just know even though it’s as foreign an environment for you as it is for them?
Or being pulled into a dispute where your usually perfectly mature 14-year-old cousin is deciding to be exceptionally stubborn one day and arguing with her parents every five minutes about not buying her something she wants?
How are you supposed to respond, keeping your own mental health and that of the ones around you in check? How do you calm the silent rage inside you when for the gazillionth time, your uncle asks you to take another picture of him in a god awful pose after having a dozen with the same backdrop already? How do you stop your relationships with your loved ones from exploding, when they all have entirely different priorities and expectations from the trip, yet insist on travelling together despite only a few people being content with what we’re doing at a time?
You need to keep the sanctity of the group intact because you have to be around these people 24/7 for a few days still and if things blow up that’s just more trouble for your own trip. And you know that you love these people — naturally — but what do you do if you don’t really like being around them?
I suppose the fact that I love them is the reason I get disappointed with them when my own expectations aren’t met. But then again, sometimes it’s their love that becomes the grounds for dispute. Mom just wanted us to be fed. Deontologically she was right, so are the consequences her fault? Who gets the blame for bad decisions made with good intentions? And if you can’t put the blame somewhere, how do you cope?
Am I holding people to too high a standard? Is this amount of drama in a family normal? Is it healthy? Having lived apart for the past few years, have I simply forgotten what life together used to be like? Have I grown used to the lack of conflict around me, and has my tolerance for it dropped since then? Or is it the novel environment that I’ve brought these people into, the fatigue from all the travel, that’s actually making them cranky? How much of all this is just bad behaviour, and how much is it them letting off steam from their own demons?
In my eyes I’ve been tolerating them, but in reality it’s probably not even a question of who’s good or bad, or who’s right or wrong — it’s just a matter of the compatibility of our natures. The things I get worked up about might be things that other people effortlessly ignore. And in some twisted way, I might be as exasperating for the people around me as they are to me. There’s no ideal solution.
I know I’m a people-pleaser. For many years I grew up in the shadow of my brother’s teenage temper, and as an adult that’s left me highly uncomfortable with conflict. But maybe sometimes the best choice is not to try to solve everything for everyone but step away and prioritise my own sanity. Or maybe some amount of conflict should be allowed to have out?
Not every blog post has a solid conclusion, and this is one of them.