“It’s up to you.” “Do whatever you want.” And, the sometimes, fatalistic, “whatever.” Has someone said something of this kind to you, indicating that you are free to decide on any course of action you wish to take in a given situation?
I grew up using the male pronoun (his, him, man – as in mankind, etc.), accepting it as universal. Women at the dawn of “women’s lib,” I grew up in its heyday, did not take offense at the language usage of the day.
In this case I’m referring to “to each his own.” So, with today’s sensitivity to all things, gender, I adapt the old idiom, to today’s title, “to each their own.”
Some folks attribute this saying to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “This above all: to thine own-self be true.” Others go back further to Roman author and politician, Cicero’s “suum_cuique,” “To each his own,” but Cicero’s connotation was not what we know of the idiom, today.
This all started with a friend who commented on a puzzle I had completed and shared because it was an artwork I admire and thought it was beautiful. She said something to the effect of “that would drive me crazy, but it’s pretty.”
You see, the “to each their own,” phrase applies to the concept of what works for me, suits me, rocks my socks, floats my boat, makes me happy, tickles my fancy, bakes my cake, flips my pancake, turns me on, or rings my bell, and yet doesn’t do any of that for you, or you, or you. And that’s okay.
A few years ago, I commented about the overarching fragrance of Russian Olive tree blossoms as I walked a wooded path in the late Spring. I phrased it something like, “this must be what the fragrance of God is; mesmerizing.” A friend commented that “it surely is not, to those of us with violent allergies.”
At the time, it didn’t occur to me that anyone wouldn’t appreciate what was to me an almost supernaturally amazing and joyful fragrance. I don’t have perfume sensitivities and my allergies are limited to being stuffed up, sneezing, and a nuisance reaction, nothing clinical or limiting as to my joy of appreciating the outdoors, or our cats, for that matter.
My friend’s comment reminded me that my experience is not the same as hers or yours, perhaps. It might be similar in some ways, and we feel like siblings from a different family, or it might be vastly different, or somewhere in between.
Because we might be the same gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, from a similar geographic background, educated similarly, go to the same church or don’t go to church, doesn’t mean we have the same ideas, values, thoughts, ideologies or moral code. Or, it might be as simple as we don’t like the same things, or perceive things identically.
Abortion is in the news, big time since the Supreme Court “leak.” For many people, this is not a personal issue, but a social one. I’m far too old for it to be personal to me, but it wasn’t personal to me back in the day either, in that I didn’t want an abortion, or need to struggle with the decision. However, I knew and cared for plenty of people to whom it was very personal.
I’m a fan of the PBS show, “Call the Midwife.” This show’s content is all about British midwives and nuns caring for their birthing community – pregnancy and birth; abortion and miscarriage; heartache and triumph, ten fingers and ten toes, and the fear and disappointment when there is some unusual variation of these, starting in the late 1950s, into the late 1960s.
Several episodes have depicted the lengths women and families had gone, to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, when abortion was not legal and the birth control pill was in its infancy. Marital rape, domestic violence, sexual assault and intimidation were barely dealt with yet in the legal system. I personally wouldn’t go back there, for anything.
I wouldn’t want to walk in anybody else’s shoes, other than my own. “Different strokes for different folks,” comes to mind. This saying originated in a 1966 interview with boxer, Muhammad Ali, as he described his boxing style in the ring.
Do you have a different style of relating to different people? I think, long-married people definitely have a shorthand when communicating. We talk differently to business associates than we do to acquaintances, family, and friends.
I think the different strokes which we apply to different folks is a social mechanism of respect directed toward others who have their own individual thoughts, ideas, and perceptions of right and wrong, good and bad.
Would that we could apply the principles of, “Live and let live,” “Que sera, sera,” and the proverbial, “To each their own,” every day, all day, and to all people. All ya all are wonderful, just the way you are, whether you’re my cup of tea or not. “I’m okay, you’re okay.”