Wanting to quit being the person who organises everyone and everything
I have heard tell of the myth called 'going with the flow'
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Recently I saw a brilliant video unpacking the idea of going with the flow. In it, the woman agrees to go with the flow, but wants to know if there is seating at the flow, what kind of temperature one can expect in the flow, and is there parking at the flow.
I want to be someone who goes with the flow – I’ve tried surfing, ziplining, martial arts, getting on a bus with no destination in mind, all activities that are designed to make you move with the frequency of the world versus trying to control it. But, having experienced the flow MANY times in my younger years, to me, the flow means you end up lost, roaming the streets like a wraith trying to find somewhere to eat or drink, you miss out on gig tickets and end up staying in hotels with an uncomfortably high cockroach to people ratio because there was a golf conference in town and everything else is booked.
I want to be the flow person but I know exactly who I am: an organiser. Of events, of people, of life. I think of this as an allergic reaction to my teenage years, mostly. My little pals and I would make some vague arrangement to meet on the high street by the big HMV, with one aim in mind: locate the various boys we had a crush on. This was just before the mobile phone boom, and what I remember most is waiting. Lots and lots of waiting.
Not being able to contact them to let them know I was late because the bus had broken down, or vice versa. Waiting to see if they would show up, which could be anything between 15 minutes to two hours. Roaming around different haunts to see if we could spot these boys. More waiting. Making plans but not really making plans because making plans was not cool.
There was more of this in my twenties because time was an infinite resource, but towards the end of the decade, the wheels began to come off. It was no longer cute to stand in line for hours, or to end up in a Wetherspoons (for Americans this is the pub version of a service station toilet). The more busy life got, the less time we had to miss out on things.
Then, there was a natural sorting system in our friendship groups of who became the people who organised, and who were the people that were organised by others. As an FYI, I don’t have children, so this isn’t the kind of thankless mandatory organising that is required when looking after a little human – that’s a whole different topic.
I can’t speak on behalf of others, but I have wondered if this need to organise other people, and the worry I feel around not having something sorted, is also a more benign aspect of my anxiety. In the same way that in ancient times, anxious people were good to have in a tribe because they tended to have better survival rates.
When you have people worrying that you might be eaten by a bear, that presumably leads to more vigilance and caution, versus people who go with the flow right into another animal’s digestive tract. Maybe without people like myself and others who get anxious around not locking in plans, nothing would ever get done.
But increasingly, especially over the last year, I have started to become interested in the people who don’t organise things, the flow people. What makes them tick, how they go about life, why they don’t worry in the same way. And more recently: how can I be more like them?
A friend of mine typifies someone being able to go with the flow. I asked her: “Doesn’t it drive you mad, not knowing what’s happening?” She shrugged. “Not really. If it happens, it happens, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”
Oh very helpful, I replied.
It’s not that I don’t like organising – I genuinely do, especially holidays - but I’ve realised that I don’t want to do it all the time. It’s not that I’m being taken advantage of by my loved ones, but my fear of not getting anything booked or not seeing my friends means that I unknowingly put myself in the role of the organiser most times. And sometimes it can be exhausting.
I’ve found myself in some instances, gripping on so tightly to organising friendships, and then getting upset when I don’t feel that love or intensity reciprocated, rather than what’s actually happening, which is that people have things going on in their own lives and not everything revolves around me.
In the past, I would have felt the necessity to keep pushing for fear of the friendship fragmenting. But what I’ve realised is that friendships don’t work if only one person is pushing, and the lack of reciprocity doesn’t mean the inevitable end of a friendship – it merely means taking a break from things.
People who organise don’t like to do this, however. We worry that things will creep into the gaps, that our usefulness will fade, that we might be forgotten, or that groups might fall apart without us repairing the fissures. To understand that line between being a vital contributor to a relationship and giving too much of oneself, is a tough one.
I’m not sure I will ever stop suggesting dates and things for people to do, or sending little messages saying I’ve booked such and such a place. But I am becoming more conscious and aware that my time is valuable, and to be mindful of when I’m trying to martyr myself. For me, that includes little things like not chasing people up for dates as if I am their PA (once or twice is fine, more than that is a pattern), and forcing myself to step back in order to give other people room to step up and sort things out.
It's also being aware of when that resentment bucket is starting to fill up, because that is a warning system telling me I’m giving more of myself than I want to. Do I feel like I’m haranguing them? How does that make me feel? How do I feel about the dynamics in my relationships with them? Do I feel they value my time as much as I value theirs?
Of course, flow people don’t worry about any of this kind of stuff. I envy them deeply. Maybe it’s time to take another crack at surfing again.
I hope you’re enjoying As I Was Saying with Poorna Bell. If you’ve liked the writing, it is worth knowing it’s entirely a reader-supported and funded publication. If you’d like it to support it, and have access to all posts and regular community chats, the best way to support is through a paid subscription. And you’d have my undying gratitude!
Thank you for this, I feel like I could have written it myself! I find that with some people, I'm quite happy to be the organiser, while with others I resent it and have learned to let those plans or even friendships go if they die out naturally. I guess it's to do with other kinds of reciprocity - if I feel like I get something back from a friend in other ways, I don't mind organising, but if I don't, then what's the point.
I also had it highlighted to me last week that I'm definitely not a "go with the flow" person, even less so than most, when I spent a week on a course in a new place, and their approach was very "we'll give you the info when you need it". I did *not* do well with that :'D I wasn't able to relax and enjoy myself until a few days in when I'd worked out what was happening, and even then I kept trying to find out the rest of the programme rather than just wait and see. I'd rather not be like this, it's exhausting, but there we are.
I’m not sure I believe there are *true* ‘flow’ people - they’re just friends with lots of organisers! 😂