Have you heard about the latest self-help trend circulating on social media — the Let Them Theory — about letting people live their own miserable existence without letting it affect us.
OK, I’m paraphrasing a bit. I’m fairly certain motivational speaker and podcaster Mel Robbins, who wrote a whole book on the Let Them Theory, never uses the term “miserable existence,” but you get the idea.
To be clear, I haven’t read the book. Self-help isn’t exactly my genre, not because I believe I’m an ideal human, but because I can’t stomach all that best-self bullshit from “certified life coaches,” Really? Who accredits THAT curriculum?
I have a serious problem with any advice that tells poor, hard-working people that if they can dream it, they can achieve it. Please.
I can imagine telling a Key West Realtor and a mortgage broker just how hard I’ve been dreaming about that walled estate on Washington Street. I’m sure they’ll get the paperwork started right away.
But back to the Let Them Theory. It aims to help people realize, as Robbins writes, “Adults are allowed to think whatever they want. So are you.” Their thoughts, beliefs and actions rarely affect as much as we like to think they do, and she advises, as a technique, to “let them” do what they will, and then “let me” decide how I respond. We can’t control other people, but we can control our responses to that person.
Someone doesn’t like me? That’s on them. My response? “They’re dead to me.” My life is pretty full and fulfilling without them.
The Let Them Theory considers an example when friends go to brunch without inviting you: Let Them. Their brunch doesn’t affect your life as much as you’d like to think it does.
One can’t consider the brunch example without recalling the famous Seinfeld episode from season 5, when Jerry’s new girlfriend doesn’t like George Costanza.
“What difference does it make? Who cares if she doesn’t like you? Does everybody in the world have to like you?” George’s date asks.
“YES. Yes, everybody has to like me,” he declares. “I must be liked.”
Me? Not so much. I’m OK with people not liking me. There’s plenty of people I don’t like. In fact I have a list. My good friend Rob O’Neal and I have been curating, editing and updating our list since 1998. In fact, just a month or two ago, I texted Rob: “I’m at an event. Remind me why we can’t stand so-and-so.”
When neither of us could recall the details of that decades-old dispute, we agreed to remove that name from our list. (We’re nothing if not diplomatic. Just call us fair and balanced.)
Someone else believes the Earth is flat and vaccines are poison? Let them. I’m already vaccinated; no skin off my back — and I’ve been on boats that have voyaged far beyond the three-mile distance to the horizon. I’ll watch your crazy from afar, ya freak.
All that said, there was an incident recently.
It happened in the McDonald’s drive-through line, six minutes before the rigid 10:30 a.m. breakfast cutoff.
For the uninitiated, our McDonald’s has two drive-through lanes that merge into one. The merge is always cordial and conflict-free — because normal people know to pull forward as soon as our business at the speaker is concluded. The fact that the driver in the other lane had reached her speaker first is irrelevant. Having pre-ordered my breakfast on the mobile app, she was still shouting about hashbrowns while I started to ease toward the window.
That’s when it all fell apart. The woman lost her mind and lurched her car around the bend to get in front of me, spitting “I was here FIRST,” through her open window.
“That’s not how it works,” I said, shaking my head, then yelling. “I hope you get the wrong food.”
I slid into line behind her, then watched delightedly as she was told to go park in a designated spot to WAIT for someone to bring out her food. It was perfect. And while I’m not proud of this next part, I even circled the parking lot to drive past her parked car and wave my completed order triumphantly.
I could have jumped out of my car like a lunatic when she cut me off. I could have lost my mind. But instead, I sat back and, well, let her lose hers.
But don’t get me wrong. She’s of course dead to me.
