Anything Less Than Everything

You get what you settle for.

Sometimes I feel it's frowned upon to have high expectations of how you should be treated by the people in your life. We're supposed to accept people "as they are." Here's what I'm thinking though... if you get what you settle for, then if you lower your expectations of people and how they should treat you, you'll probably end up resenting the people you're meant to love because you settled for less than their best. I believe one should treat others how one wants to be treated, but I also think that when it comes to your "people" (friends and others who want to be a part of your life), you have every right to expect to be treated a certain way, given that you're willing to treat them in such a manner as well.

As a teacher, we're told that if we set high expectations for our students, then students will rise to those expectations. A metaphor for this can be found in one of my favorite movies, Field of Dreams: If you build it, he will come. I think that if we set a bar for our "people," they, too, will rise to meet those expectations. I've been finding in my own life, recently, the truth to the idea that if you build it, people will come. And I'm happier for setting those expectations, because it ends up being a screener to decide who should really make it into my group of "people." It's important to be friendly and kind to all, but at the end of the day, selecting a small circle of friends you really trust is crucial; having a set of expectations for how you treat your friends and how they should treat you in return allows you to discern who deserves your trust. Once you're in, though, you're in for good. Then I can take you "as you are." I think women are more selective than men in this way... But those are thoughts for another day.

This train of thought makes me think of a poem recently discovered with a dear friend. I love this poem by Rudyard Kipling for its honesty about women's character and instinct:

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale --
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations-worm and savage otherwise, --
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger --- Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue -- to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity -- must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions -- not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unchained to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions -- in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! --
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges -- even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons -- even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish -- like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare nat leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice -- which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern -- shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

Much love ♥