Courtesy is the day-to-day grease that makes life
worth living. We make a request from someone with a sense of gratitude when we
say ‘would you please’ do this or that. We honor that person’s service to us
with an additional bestowal of gratitude when we say ‘thank you for doing that,
or helping me, or answering my question, or returning my call.’
‘Please’ and ‘thank’
you are the spiritual/emotional elements that humbly remind us that we need
other people to help us in so many ways, so many times a day. When a request is
made of us without those magic words,
it feels like we are being ‘ordered’ to do something, as if our freewill has
been removed and we are now ‘required’ to do what this person demands. Dictators
never say please and thank you.
Family dictators can
be relatives, grandparents, parents, spouses, siblings, and children. Children
only learn about the ‘magic words’ of please and thank you from their use by
their parents. However, the real magic comes when couples use the magic words
between each other. And magic would be the key when it comes to these words.
But there are some
spouses who simply cannot say please or
thank you to their husband or wife. When you ask why this is so hard to
say, you get a variety of answers:
• ‘Oh, please and
thank you are implied. I don’t need to say it.’ Does your spouse know this? Is
it implied for you too?
• ‘I don’t have time
for pleasantries, do you know how
much I have to do with all of these kids? My husband needs to jump when I tell
him to do something so I can keep my sanity!’ . . . . Right.
Bet he feels belittled all the time.
• ‘Look, my wife
knows that I love her and she doesn’t feel that need for me to say please and
thank you every time.’ . . .
Really, does she know that?
• ‘I’m always in
such a hurry that I don’t have time to do that, besides wives/husbands and kids
don’t need please and thank yous. When you’re part of a family you don’t need
that fake stuff.’ Fake stuff? When is common courtesy fake?
• ‘Look, just do
what I want. Got it? What’s your problem?’ My problem?
The humbling concept
of saying please and thank you force
the ‘requestor’ to honor the effort of the ‘requestee’. Appreciation is always
essential for any situation to work. Even the military never orders something
to be done unless a situation is dire and someone’s life is at stake.
Otherwise, it is considered military
courtesy for officer and enlisted service member alike to say please and
thank you. Gratitude eases all situation.
In a marriage, this
element is paramount. Couples with successful marriages never forget to be
grateful for the efforts of their spouse. This –again – humble element helps to
maintain balance between each spouse. Using these little words are the grease that
gets things done on the often grinding day-to-day level of grocery shopping,
putting gas in a car, putting kids to bed, making meals, cleaning house, and
doing yard work. No, we don’t run around and gushingly say thank you for every
single little thing, but the routine use of please and thank you make a huge
difference.
How big a
difference? Consider that every single time one spouse ‘orders’ another spouse
to do something and never shows any appreciation a drop of irritation is added
to that person’s emotional reservoir. Day after day, drip, drip, drip of
irritation is added to one spouse or the other’s emotional reservoir, slowly,
deliberately, inexorably, poisoning that person’s emotions.
How does this
manifest emotionally? Irritation eventually turns to varying levels of despair,
questions of whether or not that spouse is really loved begin to surface. If
you love someone, you love him or her enough to honor their efforts – don’t
you? Irritation can become irritability, which becomes impatience, which
becomes short-tempered responses, which becomes hostility. Low self-esteem is
another result and the feeling of worthlessness begins to creep into that
person’s psyche. It’s cruel really, when you think about it, that one spouses
selfishness robs the other spouse of his or her feelings of worth.
How does this
manifest physically? The body often mirrors emotional issues and needs. Skin
anomalies may begin, other body problems begin to manifest and the person never
fully feels ‘good’ about themselves, their marriage, or their choice of a
spouse. There is a grinding feeling inside a person because the grease that makes a marriage work is totally absent. Without
oil/grease in an engine, the engine will eventually seize. And so this little,
tiny, seemingly petty detail of please and thank you will eventually cause a
marriage to seize as well. Makes you wonder how many divorces could have been
avoided if the simplest courtesies could have been implemented.
Perhaps the greatest
gift that spouses can give each other is the day to day, year after year
courtesy that keeps a marriage happy. The greatest gift that parents can give
their children is a good example of a happy marriage. And perhaps that gift can
begin with ‘pleases’ and ‘thank ‘yous’, every single day
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