No

Applied liberally makes way for better yeses

One pre-spring weekend, this guy I was giddily gaga over took me to a corner of Kingston, NY I hadn’t seen, a beach on the Hudson with one end almost entirely covered with worn down brick nubs from the abandoned adjacent former brick factory archived here. Most of the bricks said company name HUTTON or some fraction of HUTTON. There were some ON bricks which I was delighted to discover could be NO when rotated. As a contrarian collector of some useless things, I found the one most pleasing to me to take home.

Inspired by this object, an essay topic was born. I want to write about saying No. How hard it is, but how I’m getting better at it. (And how that, when used liberally, this No then makes way for a few better yeses.)

Hate to harp on it, but Trump’s first candidacy and appalling victory was both what got me supercharged in my community and took me down a path of the NOPE. I got so involved for a while, as a heartbreak-radicalized Anti-Trumper—in like-minded living rooms, progressive church meeting spaces, unity marches, with the DC-bound busload of women in our knit hats, decrying to the echo-chamber of Facebook—I eventually had to tear myself out of it to continue my own regular life before he further hijacked my brain with despair and anger. Though I made all these new friends, do I want to do this again? Oh hell no.

The pandemic was my dreamscape—I had always hoped for a world that would just stop, all of it. I don’t suggest I wanted the sickness and death and all the negatives that came with it, but from my introverted perspective, hiding out at home indefinitely with No Plans was my idea of heaven, it offered a return to me and my family, a reset, a palette cleanse. No effort or awkward articulation required, no words. Everything was No, mutually understood. Which meant all the things I loved expanded in this time-space loophole. Unlimited hobbies, renovating, board games, reading, like those childhood nights with power outages where we barbecued and played by candlelight. But there was also the work, and the stress of being tied in the same spaces to the competing screens of school, employment and socializing and, it’s only a matter of months before the sheen of the reverie wears off a bit and you’re a rubber ball bouncing madly within these walls, desperate for a green release hatch.

After exhausting the tiny-house-build and lone wilderness woman meditative firewood-splitting videos on YouTube, I bought a little plot of land upstate and bailed on most of the reemerging weekend fun in my town because: I’m going north. If you want to see me, you’ll have to come camp and poop in a bucket of sawdust. And then when I went far enough down that hole—chopping, constructing, figuring out what to do with contents of said bucket—it was time to come out as a lonely single midlifer, and dare to date. The dating apps train you to think less of humans rather than more, and to try to accept being treated badly in return. You can mindlessly swipe through hundreds of men each night. No, no, no, no, nopety nope, oh help me god no. Once you finally navigate through this awful filter to an actual date, the specter of more personal rejection from either end to come adds inevitable awkwardness and anxiety. To steel yourself from this, you get increasingly better at flipping flippantly from one disappointing date to the next. In theory, or you just get your raw romantic feelings hurt, or perhaps unintentionally hurt others, again and again.

Post-pandemic, the pace picked up again as if nothing had happened, business resumed but I brought with me my habit of paring down that I had cultivated even before early March, 2020. I had weaned off much of my volunteering, quit committees, pruned to the bare essentials.

Learning to say No is an art, gets easier with age, and goes hand in hand in with success. Says a mighty rich man who knows about success, Warren Buffet:

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

In this age of stress, burnout and depression, not being able to say No and police your boundaries leads to much more of those three things. There are many books out there on the art of saying No, including, of course, The Art of Saying No. Tips to learning to say No, from an article on lifehack.org, include, in summary:

1. Value your time

2. Know your priorities

3. Practice before saying No

4. Don’t apologize

5. Stop being nice

6. Learn to say No to your boss

7. Pre-empt the requests

8. Take time to say No

9. Offer an alternative timeframe

10. Be sincere about your rejection

And my favorite advice about saying No, which I like to capitalize for emphasis, comes with this positive spin from Forbes.com:

1. FIND YOUR YES

Before you can become good at saying no, you have to know what you’re saying yes to when you’re saying no. You see every opportunity that you pass with a no is really saying yes to something else—something that you’d prefer to do or something more important to you in the long run. You can’t hope to say no when the pressure is on until you know for sure what you really want. When you’re feeling pressure to say yes and acquiescence feels easier than taking a stand, just think of your yes. If joining the PTA fundraising committee means spending even less time with your children, focusing your attention on this fact will embolden you to say no and keep your priorities straight.

The other steps to follow in this article are:

2. Sleep on it

3. Sandwich the no between two yeses

4. Make sure you’re actually saying No

5. Be prepared to repeat yourself

But then there’s that part of me that says No to more lists, more productivity apps, more how-to, being online to find these answers in the first place. I want my No to be organic and padded in retreat and silence.

Arthur C. Brooks goes deep on this with his own difficulty to say No in a recent column in The Atlantic, with two main reasons about the future (not valuing it enough or assuming too much about it):

My problem is twofold. The first is not valuing the future properly compared with the present. Economists and psychologists have long studied the phenomenon of discounting, according to which we value something right now more highly than we value the idea of having the same item in, say, a year’s time. This is one of the reasons we demand interest on money we put away in a savings account, and also why lottery winners will accept a lower lump-sum payout today over staggered payments that will amount to a larger sum in the future.

For Brooks, this means he’s sacrificing future inconvenience for the joy right now of saying yes.

The second problem is the fear of future regret. Humans have astonishing mental time-travel abilities. We are able to imagine ourselves in a future state, feeling chagrin for a decision we’re making right now—which in turn affects that decision. Researchers have shown that this concern can lead to risk avoidance.

Have you noticed how some people really just own their No’s and are really good at naysaying, and therefore utterly respected in their unflappable skins. Every office has those people who just float around unencumbered by much actual work, because they are expert at diffusing any responsibility, while us miscellaniums just run behind with our dustbins absorbing all the extra fluff no one wants. Sure, I’ll catch that, I’ll sweep that up.

Brooks mentions the four scientists, namely mid-career environmental social scientists, who I read on Nature.com had formed a No club. “Facing a pandemic and career burnout, this member whimsically suggested we make a game out of saying no by challenging ourselves to collectively decline 100 work-related requests.” They spent a year saying No, and improving their lives/jobs in the process, reporting their findings in a paper I can’t read without paying for a membership—so I say ixnay to that too.

The derivation of No, according to Etymonline:

(Adv.) “not in any degree, not at all,” Middle English, from Old English na, from ne “not, no” + a “ever.” The first element is from Proto-Germanic *ne (source also of Old Norse, Old Frisian, Old High German ne, Gothic ni “not”), from PIE root *ne- “not.” Second element is from Proto-Germanic *aiwi-, extended form of PIE root *aiw- “vital force, life, long life, eternity.” Ultimately identical to nay, and the differences of use are accidental.

As an adjective, “not any, not one, none” (c. 1200) it is reduced from Old English nan (see none), the final -n omitted first before consonants and then altogether. As an interjection making a negative reply to a statement or question, “not so,” early 13c., from the adverb. As a noun, 1580s as “a denial; a negative vote,” 1650s as “person who casts a negative vote.”

Unfortunately many things require an active opt-out to counter their default opt-in. All those emails we get that are too cumbersome to scroll down and find the unsubscribe so we just delete. Our community’s more expensive sustainable energy option that flips many unsuspecting ConEd customers out because you’re subscribed by default. (Though to that, I still say stay, if you can afford to.)

And then there’s the “it’s not you, it’s them” problem. Two traits of the narcissist you see on the grand scale (you know who) and in our personal lives and perhaps in weird abundance on these dating apps are exploitation and entitlement. If you have a habit of pleasing them with your yeses, there will be no end. Rather than try to say No to this person, who won’t honor that anyway, just avoid the person is the anecdotal advice on the diurnal scale but please take the definition above to heart on the national scale and actively cast a vote in the other direction.

And so it went with the man I found that brick with on that beach. Our last date actually. A suitor no longer suitable because the painful pattern of his ghosting and reviving and reghosting became, finally, intolerable. Gagging on the gaga is only possible outcome. No is the mantra to protect the growing body of knowledge of the ever-guiding internal spreadsheet I’m amassing of the nonnegotiable qualities of kindness, integrity, consistency, for every person on every level of our lives. Say enough No’s to the opposite elements and the word begins to sing and summon, and make space for, some rare species. The beautiful yes.