Yesterday I met up with my two closest Japanese friends, Ichi and Shin. Ichi had gone back to Japan for a month-long vacation and yesterday was my first time to see him back. And Shin, he’d been gone for years, having already transferred to Bulgaria after living in Davao for more than 3 years. Sadly, he’ll be gone again before the month is out.
Ever since I started having up-close-and-personal contacts with the Japanese, Ichi and Shin have guided me along the intricate and occasionally confusing pathways of Japanese interpersonal relations. Be it in friendships, business affiliations, temporary liaisons — the Japanese have patterns of accepted behavior, probably codified in their genes. For a non-Japanese, it can be a struggle comprehending those complex and unwritten rules of conduct.
That’s why I’ve always been careful in my dealings with the Japanese. Most times it feels like walking on eggshells around them. Add to the difficulty their expectation of my being aware of their social norms, simply because I now possess a reasonable level of Nihongo proficiency. (Well, after all, their language clearly reflects their social structures.)
Alas! No matter how careful you are, you just can’t please everybody.
For instance, there is one Japanese national working in Davao who inexplicably seems to despise me. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what I might have done to him. Let’s just call him Westmount. He doesn’t know me personally. Oh we’ve been introduced and all that, but we’ve not spoken 10 words to each other. Obviously he has no inkling at all what I do or what my favorite color is. We just happen to find ourselves in the same circles at times. But my friend Ichi says that Westmount hates my guts.
The reason why I try to behave myself around Japanese people is because I do business with them. And knowing that reputation is a sensitive issue for them (even more so than most other cultures), I’m always conscious of keeping my integrity intact. So far so good actually. My commerce with them, while not exactly lucrative, has been smooth sailing. And I’ve even become chummy with a few of them.
But here comes along Westmount, who has been heard saying he doesn’t need me. That I am of no consequence to him. Hoekaaay…. At first I was miffed when told about this. After a minute, though, I simmered down. (That minute, however, was enough for volumes of unprintable invectives to flash through my mind.)
For a brief moment, I was afraid all my hard work and efforts in building my “image” would be torn down by one person. But no, I doubt it. Oh, it might happen — but wouldn’t that make for an exciting diversion? Something to get the heart pumping hot blood?
I’m not trying to be cavalier. It’s just that, having detractors has become something of a tolerated nuisance. A fact of life, kung baga. You should’ve seen my battle-hardened enemies back in my tourism industry days. This Westmount yatsu pales in comparison. But I digress….
The valuable point we shouldn’t neglect is that, we have people on our side too. Wouldn’t you rather be invigorated by this knowledge? Or would you rather dwell on the negative and seethe in frustration over something beyond your control (or in Westmount’s case, beyond comprehension)?
Why try to please everybody in the first place? Or anybody for that matter. You just run the risk of ending up a brown-noser if you tried. Nobody likes a kiss-ass.
11:33 am on 5 Jun 2007
Sigh. I know the feeling. There will always be detractors. Best way to deal with them is to just ignore them.
11:40 am on 5 Jun 2007
Or blog about them.
2:29 pm on 5 Jun 2007
Yeah… unless the detractors are also blog readers who leave nasty comments.
11:38 pm on 5 Jun 2007
I feel you, Blogie. Back in college I would reach out to my detractors and try to find out what they hate about me. It gave me a chance to clarify wrong notions (and most times they’re proven wrong) and if not, you can always do better if a fault has been pointed out.
My partner would always tell me to “kill them with kindness”. If it doesn’t work, that’s the time I mirror their bitchiness, two can play that game >:o]
11:23 am on 6 Jun 2007
I know how you feel. That’s almost always present in the world of business.
10:28 pm on 7 Jun 2007
This is how Ms. Korina Sanchez once put it when she emailed me back with a very valuable piece of thought years ago. Tongues wagged when she was replaced on TV Patrol then. At that same time, my contract wasn’t renewed with my local tv show simply because I was gaining weight (the evaluation about my hosting was impressive, but I looked TOO FAT on the boob tube, and it drove me to a crash diet that almost wrecked my health). Plus, I was replaced with a younger one.
I emailed her out of a whim, despite people telling me she was a primadonna on the set. All she emailed back was, “…it happens to the best of us. Just remember that the sweetest revenge is a good life.”
You know, it appeased me somehow. I’ve been having a good life ever since.
12:26 pm on 8 Jun 2007
You actually don’t have to please everybody…just do what is right even if you have to swim upstream…
12:44 am on 14 Jun 2007
I was a people pleaser. Especially with the nature of work I used to have (pharma industry) where we were at the mercy of physicians and drugstore owners, image was everything. Butthen again, I realized that I should refuse to apologize for I am.
For as long as we do everything on the right perspective, I don’t think we should be weary of what others think of us.
Thanks for this post.
3:17 am on 14 Jun 2007
You’re welcome, intsik.
You’re right, you know: as long as what we’re doing is proper (to say the least), we shouldn’t really have to lose sleep over other people’s perception of us.