In the past week, two people have told me what I should do. I am not talking about a policeman who directed me in traffic, or a salesperson who moved me to the back of the line. These were people who had a clear plan of what I should do, and spelled out instructions. 

 

I felt indignant. Neither of them hold any authority over me, as in a supervisor. They are just folks who decided to give me a push. Normally, I do not consider myself to be feisty, but feist showed up. Memories percolated about the years in which it was ostensibly my job to raise children, and how that sometimes backfired. Weaning myself of that prerogative has been like applying air brakes to an eighteen wheeler. One year it is my duty to stop a preschooler from grabbing all the cookies, and the next minute, or rather decade, I am controlling if I suggest that my child drive more slowly. In my car. On my insurance. In the rain. 

 

It was a stark lesson for me. The human spirit does not usually welcome coercion. I know this in theory, and yet the sensation of hair sticking up on the back of my neck pulled it from hypothetical to visceral. 

 

It occurred to me that I had been bossy to someone earlier this summer. It was not from meanness, but still it bruised our relationship. I got out my phone and wrote an apology. 

 

Rediscovering that being bossed is no picnic gave me a deeper incentive to not be bossy.