You Have the Right to Say "No"

Imagine an oversized tray, overflowing with someone else's distress...

Do you have someone in your life who asks questions that you don’t want to answer, who tries to get you to engage, and who simply re-words their current argument when you say you don’t want to talk? Who subtly pushes you to respond, even if you’ve already said you don’t have the physical energy or mental capacity to have a conversation?

It’s like they’re carrying around an oversized tray, overflowing with their own distress. Their own anxiety. Their own confusion.

They find it unbearable to carry that tray, so they try to off-load some of it onto you. They entice you into taking just one bite. Some of us are so accustomed to being polite that we accept it because we haven’t learned we have the right to decline.

Or perhaps you do decline, but they try again - this time from a different angle. “How about now?” “Now?”

“NOW!?!”

They may end up dumping the entire tray in your lap.

Maybe they walk away. But it’s just temporary. They’ll be back with more, because dumping doesn’t resolve any of it, and like a fungus or a disease, it always seems to come back.

At best, you have a bad a taste in your mouth. At worst, it’s as if they projectile-vomited and left you with the mess.

I want to be clear about something: You have the right to say no.

You have the right to decline what they’re trying to tempt you with.

If you accidentally took a bite and realized it was a mistake, you can spit it out.

You have the right to leave, and you have the right to show them the door.

In fact, you have the right to emphatically refuse with enough force to slam the door shut with the intensity of a two-letter word!

You, my friend, have the right to say “no.”

I guess that’s all I have to say about that for now… Blessings to you!