Speak Up for Yourself

Two things will always make my fur stand on end in relationships, whether personal or business: dishonesty (both lying by commission and by omission; see George W. Bush & Co., for example) and lack of assertiveness. My colleague Dick Margulis, in discussing the latter issue, writes:

As freelance consultants we are not servants to our clients. If you put yourself in that position relative to your client, the client will devalue your services, impose on your time for favors, pay slowly or short, and generally treat you like a bathmat. Make it an adult–adult relationship, not a parent–child relationship. In an adult–adult relationship, you, as the freelance, are empowered to help the client behave in a less entitled manner. Try it. You’ll like it.

It’s not just some freelancers who act this way. I see it in certain older relatives, whom I’d expect, by virtue of their long life experience, to stand firm when sales clerks or bosses or personal physicians try to treat them as powerless children. I see it in their adult son, who, in his mid-forties, is just now realizing that his boss of 13 years doesn’t own him. I see it in friends my age who describe intolerable issues in personal relationships but do not stand up for themselves and their needs.

I see it in fellow Americans who stew about the mess this country’s in but are afraid to speak out publicly for fear of being called unpatriotic.

My husband (Ed) and I bought the house we live in from his parents more than a decade ago. A couple of decades before that, they'd installed a 30-foot flagpole in the front yard, and they often flew the American flag from it.

When Ed and I took ownership of the house and his parents moved into the apartment we built into the downstairs, we continued their tradition of flying the flag, but we added a world peace flag (with the word peace in many languages on it).

When Bush stole into office the first time, we flew the American flag upside down for a week as a symbol of national distress. And then we took it down because we were ashamed of what we could see that Bush, who hides behind the flag, was beginning to do to our country and to international relations. Just after 9/11, when there was a nationwide frenzy of flying American flags, we flew only the world peace flag because we were very afraid of what Bush would do in the name of 9/11 and we didn't like the way many Americans were using the national flag to show a sort of national machismo. Our American flag won't go up again until Bush leaves office.

About 2 months ago, we ordered a custom flag—yellow with black lettering, 3 feet by 5 feet, and not cheap—that reads: Impeach Bush and Cheney Now!

Some think I should be afraid to fly such a flag. But I’m desperate for America to change course, so I’m not scared. And the older I get, the less I care what others think of my political stance. (Of course, it helps that I live in a middle-class suburb instead of in a nation under siege by foreign soldiers [think Iraq] or by rebel nationals who kill people for taking political stances.)

But most of all, I fly that flag because I want an adult–adult relationship with my government. If it treads on my boundaries, I speak up. I wish you would too.



Bush Iraq war Cheney impeach assertiveness flag EditorMom