by Masako Toyoda
Today someone (dare I say, a client?) paid me to take photos of them for their professional website. It was my first experience, ever, of being paid to take photos.
What was interesting to realize today is the fact that he (who I consider a friend and for whom I offered to do this for free) was very grateful. If there is an agreed upon monetary transaction, I tend to think that of course the seller has to provide the service; the thankfulness of the client is expressed in the dollar signs (euro signs, here) already and, out of courtesy, thankfulness, of course, should still be expressed but is unnecessary. Yet, he seemed genuinely grateful.
Yesterday evening in a chat with my best friend, she expressed her anger towards the many people who, in her view, have taken significant advantage of me (including some friends I keep around me today) throughout the last five years she’s known me extremely well and also mildly towards me for always letting this happen and never cutting ties with nor getting properly upset with those who do.
I have this habit of saying “of course” or “my pleasure” instead of “you’re welcome” when anyone (strangers, acquaintances, close friends) thanks me, because, my thought is, ‘of course I want to help you’, combined with an ‘even if I didn’t want to help you, of course it is the right thing to do to help you and thus of course you should expect me to behave in this way’.
What I’ve noticed in the last few months with several friends is that my responding to their initially grateful attitude with my ‘I love you so much, of course I want to help you’ attitude… does not at all lead to them appreciating me more or even properly. And while I don’t believe / philosophically hold that I should decide to do what I do based on whether or not others will appreciate me more or less, I have been realizing lately how much of a loss I have been eating up myself for example, in being treated disrespectfully, being taken advantage of temporally, emotionally, socially, and even monetarily, and probably many more things I don’t yet realize. With several friends, I’ve realized lately that they simply expect me to want to help them, they expect me to treat them well, and are not even appreciative of the things I do for their sake, even when it is a significant burden for me in many ways. [I suppose I should add a caveat to be fair to them: I don’t think most of them even realize that what I do for them is a burden because I try very much to hide it. I don’t think it’s pleasant to feel like a burden to others; of course I don’t want them to feel that way.]
My best friend said to me yesterday that we should be so much more mad at the people who screw us over like we are when people do that to our friends. While she’s always been more cynical than I have been (not a difficult bar to reach given my heavy idealism), this claim really did hit home. Why is it that my own time, my emotional well-being, etc. being taken advantage of doesn’t enrage me like it does when assholes do the same to those I care about?
One of my good friends told me this hilarious story regarding one of her past relationships: she drunkenly called her boyfriend to come pick her up at 3 or 4 am after a night out partying and over the phone yelled at him profusely to immediately drive an hour to get her. After hanging up the phone, she realized oh what a horrible thing she just did yelling at him and called him back, this time to yell at him for “how could you let me treat you like that?”. She realized then that she had to break up with him because having someone who would let her walk all over them like that was no good for shaping her character.
Lately, through many experiences (not included here), I see that with the vast majority of people (important caveat: not with most of my closest of friends who would not dare take advantage of this part of my character they know so well) it is quite a grave mistake to behave as I have been behaving–to offer freely and generously every part of me that I can offer to those I care about. It’s of course okay to demand respect and proper treatment and regard, and sometimes, just sometimes, it’s okay to charge some form of cost for my services.
