A few days ago, I received a “Facebook Event” invitation. I knew that I didn’t want to attend and in order to clean that little piece of my day up, I clicked on the “decline” button.
My mind immediately moving on to other things, I was surprised that simply declining had not completed the process. Suddenly, in order for my “no, thank you” to be submitted, I had to fill out a little box that said “explain why you can’t attend.”
Explain why I can’t attend?
Oh boy. I didn’t like that one bit.
First of all, did I say that I could not attend? No… in fact, in this particular case, I could easily attend. I just don’t want to. To put it another way: I choose not to.
So, that’s the first important piece for me, here. The choice part. I really like being able to choose not to do something even though I could. And I also like feeling completely okay with expressing that choice and (and this is the big piece) not lying about it. Not even a tiny toonsy bit. Not even the tiny little lie that says “let me check my calendar and get back to you.”
Now, let me tell you: this is not something that has come naturally to me. Growing up in France (the land of polite evasion) and in a family that seemed to have a stronger pre disposition than most for “white lies,” I had to really extricate my own voice. And now that I have it mostly honed, I am not ready to let some weird little Facebook system get in its way.
Ok. Second part of my rant. “EXPLAIN.”
Why in the world would I have to explain my choice? Why is a simple “no” not enough?
And what happens once I have “explained?” Does my explanation go sit on some jury panel somewhere (most likely inside somebody’s mind) in order to be deemed acceptable or not? Why? By whom?
So, no. I won’t be attending this time. But I do thank you for inviting me, I truly do.