Allowance Is Not Being a Doormat

This morning I was out at breakfast. There were just 3 tables seated in the restaurant and a man at one of the tables was talking extremely loudly.

Ron, my enjoyable other, was getting a bit annoyed. “I’m going to ask that man to talk quieter” Ron told me.

I scrunched my nose.

“It it a big deal?” I asked him.

Even as I said it I could hear underneath my cheerful tone, the superior subtext that implied “If you were more conscious, you wouldn’t be bothered by it. But do what you want.”

It deterred him for a good eight minutes before he got up from the table, crossed the restaurant and politely asked the man if he would speak quieter.

The man laughed with his table partner, looked in my direction, jeered a bit, scoffed at Ron and then replied “sure, no problem.”

Twenty minutes later, as we were finishing a quiet breakfast, a dowdy looking middle aged lady who had been sitting alone at the 3rd table got up to leave.

Rather than making a straight line to the door, she crossed the restaurant and came up to our table.

“Thank you so much” she said looking straight at Ron. “I hope you two have a great breakfast.”

It was no secret what she meant. That this man’s rude blather had bothered her long before we sat down.

I realized how many people are bullied by energies like that. And how often I misidentify “allowance” as being a door mat and letting people steam roll myself or others.

In my judgement that we should be in allowance of this mans obnoxious voice, I had asked no questions at all.

What had Ron been aware of? What kindness had there been in his request?

There was no check that came with our breakfast.

“A woman who was here earlier paid for your breakfast when she left” our waitress told us.

Tears sprung to my eyes as I got how impacted this woman had been by Ron’s simple choice. The choice to choose what worked for him.

His allowance for himself and others around him actually included what would create more for everyone, including the loud talking man.

That is allowance. True allowance.

And that is how ripples of change spread through the world. One simple choice. A choice for what works for you.

What have you defined allowance as that it is not? And what change is possible today?