Approval Addiction

Approval Addiction.......did I get your attention? Also known as the need to please everyone. I find myself caught in this dilemma frequently. I'm sure it probably started in childhood with the desire to please my parents.

 Also to please my big sister so she would play with me. Probably the best way to illustrate this was the time I touched a bumblebee. Not because I wanted to.....but to prove to my sister that I was brave! I might not have been so quick to declare my bravery if I had seen the bumblebee on a nearby flower ( as my older sibling had also told me that when you are stung by a bumblebee you have 10 seconds to remove the stinger or you die! )

 So not to disappoint my sister I bravely went where no man has gone before and touched the bee. It stung me! My sister, (always my cheerleaders in acts of stupidity) began to declare to the neighborhood kids that I was the bravest of the brave. As she chronicled my deed of bravery I slowly began to count (one, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand) I think I was up to eight or nine with death on the horizon before she detected my panic dance of death and pulled out the stinger!

 You would have thought that I learned a valuable lesson that day......maybe I have, looking back over the event now. I find that I don't have the time or desire to be anyone other than me. I have decided that life is too short for anything other than comfortable shoes! One size fits all is a myth! And bumblebee sting when you touch them. As for my big sister......I still like it when she gives me her attention and includes me in her activities and that's probably never going to change.