You Are Not Fun and Convenient

“You are not fun and convenient.”

…and please don’t try to be either! 

One of the most admired identities in the world is being “easy to be around.” Fun. Pleasant. Low maintenance. But somewhere along the way, many of us quietly confused being pleasant with being convenient.

“If you are agreeable and have less hangups (aka needs), you’re a fun and pleasant person”

Sound familiar?

Coz this is the golden standard many of us try to achieve. And when someone compliments us for being fun and easygoing, it creates a massive dopamine hit that makes you forget all about your own needs. 

Over time, something strange happens.

Convenience stops being just a behaviour. It slowly becomes an identity.

And identities are addictive.

Before we realize it, we are no longer simply choosing to be agreeable. We are invested in being the agreeable one. 

And once an identity is formed, it becomes really hard to step out of it.

Why we hold on to this identity?

There could be a million reasons. But these three were certainly mine – 

1. Maintaining peace in relationships

2. Being liked and perceived pleasantly

3. Fear of withdrawal of emotional warmth

Am I right? Close Enough? If you resonate with this, we’re all in the same boat sweetheart. But do you wanna continue rowing this boat single handedly? Could be a long way…

The Boat Deal

Imagine you and your bestfriend in a small boat. You both agree to row together. At first, it’s fun. The work is shared, the water is calm, and even when your shoulders ache a little, the journey still feels light.

Now imagine your friend suddenly gets a phone call and stops rowing. They signal to you to keep going for a bit and that they’ll join you soon.

You smile and say, “Ofcourse”

Minutes pass. The water gets rougher. Your shoulders start burning. The fun slowly disappears coz you’re the only one rowing now.

But you don’t say anything. You assume you’ll warn the invisible medal of Miss Congeniality at the end of the ride.

By the time the journey ends, you’re exhausted and resentful. You drop the oars and walk away.

Meanwhile your friend is completely confused.

Afterall, you never once mentioned that the boat had become too heavy to row alone.\

This is exactly how some relationships become imbalanced. 

Not because the other person intended it that way, but because we quietly built an identity volunteered to carry the weight. And identities are hard to negotiate once everyone has gotten used to them.

I’m sure you’re all aware of men and women who start acting out with their close ones around the age of 65. At the time, people call them insane or assume they’re hormonal. They assume that coz outwardly there’s no visible reason to justify the sudden change of behaviour. The fact is, they had constructed their identities around being the peacemakers and never rocking the boat. But, inwardly a lot had been cooking for years.

Don’t be a spoilt pressure cooker

Imagine a pressure cooker. It is expected to let out its pressure through its whistle every now and then. Like this, it’s assumed to be functioning correctly. Now what would you say if the same pressure cooker started letting out uneven pressure by tilting it’s lid in weird and unexpected ways. You’d think the cooker had become volatile but volatility wasn’t the problem. 

The problem was suppressed pressure for too long.

Humans work the same way. 

When we keep suppressing discomfort to maintain our identity as the easy one, pressure slowly builds inside us.

Eventually it leaks out in confusing ways- irritation, withdrawal, emotional explosions.

People around us wonder what happened.

But inwardly, the pressure had been building for years. Releasing that pressure early and honestly doesn’t destroy relationships. In many cases, it actually reconstructs them in healthier ways

The fear of being ‘too much’

Most of us are trained very early in life to be agreeable.

Don’t argue.

Don’t challenge authority.

Don’t express discomfort.

Don’t be difficult.

Your reward will be-

-Love. Protection. Comfort.

Those rules were useful when we were children. They were never meant to become the blueprint for our adult identity. 

The fact is, the world doesn’t reward niceness, it gets accustomed to it.

It quietly sets it as your baseline.

And the higher you set the bar, the faster it succumbs to gravity with the slightest crack in the walls.

So the real question isn’t if you are convenient. The million dollar question is-

ARE YOU WORTH THE INCONVENIENCE? 

Coz being inconvenient without growth is only entitlement.

Invest in growing yourself. Start with trusting in your opinions and choices. Read more. Get curious about everything. Get out of your comfort zone. Get obsessed with your own growth. Be it emotional, mental or physical. Build your identity around growth, love and strength. Your growth maybe inconvenience for a short time for your loved ones today but going ahead you’d be gifting them an eternal tower of strength to lean on.

My 90 year old granny who was sleeping in my bedroom for a few days was once asked jokingly- “If you sleep in Monica’s room, where will she sleep?” She answered- “How would I know. That’s her problem!” 

That moment made me smile. She finally learnt to take care of herself after a lifetime of pleasing others. And maybe that lesson doesn’t have to wait 90 years for the rest of us.