Swimming in Someone Else's Seas
On the cost of people-pleasing — and the slow work of learning to swim in the seas that are actually yours.
A lot of us spend years trying to be the right shape for someone else’s water. The polite name for it is agreeable. The honest name for it is something closer to vanishing.
To those who appease;
The ones who people please
I know it’s hard to cease
What no one else sees
That if we acted with humility
And grace;
Communed with communities
And listened to our tragedies
We’d be destined for prosperity
In unified proclivity
And for those who lack integrity
I urge you to hear intently
For you may learn quickly
About what it means
To swim in someone else’s seas
The trap of people-pleasing is that the audience never sees the work. You shrink for them. They didn’t ask. They wouldn’t have minded if you stayed your size. The cost is invisible to everyone except you — and even to you, only sometimes.
The poem ends mid-thought on purpose. To swim in someone else’s seas. That’s where most of the harm gets done — not in dramatic betrayals, but in the quiet years of being in the wrong water.
— JTC