More Chairs, Please

Or Maybe Just One for Larry David

An attractive, intelligent-seeming woman on social media says,

You should welcome and give a seat to all aspects of your personality, the good and the bad.

You picture yourself in a room, pulling up chairs for the various parts of yourself: There’s the planner, strategic and focused.

Pull up a chair, you say. You are welcome anytime.

There’s the version of yourself who is engaged with the world, the one who buys tickets to plays and concerts.

Grab a seat, you say.

There’s the yogi who eats crunchy salads and avoids meat.

Be sure to make room for that one, you insist.

And there’s the person who’s constantly chanting, You got this.

Get that one a chair, you shout.

And a trophy, too, for God’s sake.

You feel conflicted about your other selves. The one who will not carry the dirty dish to the sink, much less wash it. The one who makes an unpardonable mess with no intention of tidying up. The one who doesn’t open the mail, who postpones paying the bill even though the deductible has yet to be met. The one who who puts off calculating the monthly spending, though it’s an easy task.

No chairs for those people, you say.

Not welcome.

Yet the woman in the video advocates that you accept all aspects of yourself. Grant each one a chair, the exemplary ones, as well as the reprobates.

You think about it. Banning the uninvited from the table: How’s that working out for you?

Exactly.

So why not try pulling up a chair for everyone, even the undesirables? Accommodate them. Figure out why they’re here. Be polite. Gracious, even. Stop wishing them away. Provide a seat. Get to know and understand them better.

Oh, but the discomfort of contemplating those despicable parts of yourself. The hater. The procrastinator. The one with nothing nice to say. Hard to acknowledge them, let alone give them a seat at the table.

Still.

You don’t kick the jumping dog to the curb. You cope— coexist in the same space. You might literally turn your back on him so that eventually he stops jumping, but you don’t banish him.

So you decide to give it a go. You pull up chairs for all your demons. You tell yourself: Be outrageous; offer them a chair; act nonchalant.

Inside, you shut your eyes tightly and hope that the more worthy parts of yourself will prevail. You even go so far as to consider the possibility of redemption. Maybe your bad actors will morph into someone full of grace.

Next you start to think about your nation. More than anything, you want good to prevail in your country. You want a leader with a steady moral compass, a person guided by empathy. Within yourself you will allow the glutton to dine at the table, the lazy person to recline on the BarcaLounger. You will be a gracious host. But nine miles down the road, in D.C., you are not sure what to do about the seating in the West Wing, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Increasingly, people there not only claim chairs at the table, they wield hatchets, swinging away, cutting the legs off of everyone else’s chairs.

Some days you just want to remove all the chairs in the room, like in the game, leaving just one. And when the music stops, and only one person gets to sit, the person who gets to sit is Larry David, that intolerant, ruthlessly honest curmudgeon.