Marcia Yudkin’s essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ms., Next Avenue and NPR as well as numerous literary journals. From her home base of Goshen, Massachusetts (population 960), USA, she advocates for introverts through her weekly newsletter, Introvert UpThink.
Decades ago, as a fresh-faced freelance writer I confronted situations beyond what I’d ever experienced or imagined. Many involved slithery behavior around money. A woman I met through a business organization, for example, hired me to identify pros and cons for a book idea she was pondering. After handing Selena my report, I asked for the fee we’d agreed on. She replied, “Sorry, I don’t have the money.” What? Would she sit and order in a restaurant and when the bill came, shrug it away with just a bit of a red face? What kind of person would consider that OK?
Afterwards, I blasted blame, shooting rays of hostility toward her whenever our paths crossed. I blamed Selena upside down and right-side up for not paying me. According to common-sense morality, you should never promise what you don’t have. Duh! The amount was too small to pursue in court. Then I watched Selena campaign to become president of the organization where I met her. I considered shaming her in front of colleagues, but such machinations lay outside of my moral universe.
* * *
This spring Cassandra, I, and three other friends rented a beach house together in Rhode Island, Wednesday to Monday, for a milestone college reunion. Friday she went to bed with a pounding headache and fever; Saturday she tested positive for Covid-19. “My bad!” Cass said, revealing that she didn’t wear a mask on her Tuesday flights. Though she isolated herself on the house’s back porch, the illness had already jumped the gap. Two of the rest of us, including me, tested positive on Monday. I went home with a cough, sore throat and fatigue, and only two worried weeks later did I test negative. The cough lingered.
The consensus among the friends: Through negligence, Cass had caused me to get sick. Yet not for a moment did I blame her. I wondered why. What element in the calculus of blame was missing in this instance?
* * *
When you research the nature of blame online, the first thing you find is projection, where someone who goofed proclaims it was someone else’s fault. “If he hadn’t piled on more work than a mortal could do, I would have finished in time.” That type of blame reflects poorly on the blamer. They’re evading responsibility, preening as squeaky clean when they actually set a mess in motion. Or they’ve jumped to unwarranted conclusions, like the mentoree who furiously accused me of disparaging his spotty education when I said he needed to proofread his writing more carefully. In my reaction to Selena, such cracked-mirror distortion wasn’t in play. She flat-out owed me money and acknowledged that that was the case.
With Selena and Cassandra, we’re not mucking around in the mud pit of psychopathology but rather considering who deserves drubbing for doing wrong. Blaming someone involves resenting them, at least a little, for some harm they’ve knowingly done to you. Selena’s case fits this definition. We’d agreed on a fee for service, and she harmed me by not honoring the agreement. She did this knowingly, and I wanted her cast into the seventh level of hell for it. Cass also caused me harm and apologized for being careless. Did her apology and our long-term bond cancel the rationale for blame?
* * *
Second to surface in a Google search on the dynamics of blame is the question, How can we blame others less? Apparently, even righteous indignation is a flaw we should strive to overcome. I sat with that idea for a long while. A story my husband Bu once told came back to me.
At that time, he was commuting in heavy Boston traffic every day for work. During a slowdown one afternoon, the car behind rear-ended him hard. Bu slammed out of the driver’s seat and stalked toward the guy who’d hit him, intending to yell something like “Why the hell weren’t you paying attention?” But the instant he glimpsed the offender, his anger melted and disappeared. “The guy was old,” he explained.
Brought up in China, Bu has a Confucian respect in his bones for elders. I saw the same foundation keep him calm when my mother upbraided him one time. My mother waved her arm around our student-style apartment and complained, “My daughter shouldn’t have to live like this.” Her comment made my jaw clench, but Bu nodded politely.
Regardless of where we grew up, regardless of the misdeed, therapists say we’re better off accepting the outrageous thing that happened and, like Bu in those incidents, simply go on and cope with any consequences. Blame is unhealthy, they seem to agree. So when I didn’t blame Cass for infecting me, was I showing mature serenity?
* * *
As I pondered further, two observations floated into my mind. First, I noticed helplessness and disconnection in my situation with Selena. I sent blame her way because with my inexperience, I didn’t know what else I could do. I took her declaration that she wouldn’t pay up as final. Rethinking it, though, I actually had options. I could have persistently followed up, reminding her of the debt and asking if she could pay now, or now, or now. I could have proposed a payment plan. I might even have asked how she could compensate me with something other than money – for instance, by promoting my work to her contacts.
Disconnection came up because I was isolated in that organization. Selena had a queenly status there, whereas I was an outsider. By blaming her, accepting my being sidelined from the social center, I was buying into my victimization. I didn’t have to do that.
Second, I saw how projection, which I initially dismissed as absurd, had a role. It wasn’t purely Selena doing something bad to me. My own business practices played a part. Years later in my business I headed off such problems by requiring payment in advance by credit card. With experience I eased the way for trouble-free transactions.
Blame, which I fully believed at that time was justified, did not serve me with Selena. It just let me stew in ineptitude and anger. And as for Cass, without thinking it through I glided into a more productive attitude. There too my own preparation for our get-together factored in: Prior to our meeting, I deliberately did not suggest my friends take precautions against the virus. Before, during and after the event, joyful reuniting with old friends took precedence.
* * *
After this jaunt through psychology, do I accept that blame hurts the blamer most, regardless of any hard or outrageous facts? Well, I now understand the combatants. In one corner sits an accuser, puffed up with emotion, ready to brandish a furious, Old Testament-style finger, wagging as if it has power to zap the wrongdoer. As theater, as drama that acts out ancient impulses, that warrior has strength and confidence. In the other corner bustles a quiet, practical figure, skilled at ducking through the ropes to carry on, who also holds ground and resolves conflict without histrionics. She’s the wily smoother, the behind-the-scenes fixer who makes sure the best show runs on.
What a choice! What a surprising, splendid set of alternatives.
This was really interesting. I liked how you broke down your own reactions to blame and showed how letting go can actually be better for you.
It made me think about times I’ve held onto anger unnecessarily.
Good read.
For me the difference is in been the apparent intentions. Your client indeed benefited herself, at your expense. Your friend did not intend to get Covid, let alone to pass it on to you, she simply exercised poor judgment/negligence, which she owned up to and for which she apologized.