None of My Business

When I was in sixth grade, my best friend’s parents were getting divorced. Her mother was seeing a man who lived an hour and a half away. My best friend told me they would probably move. This upset the entire foundation of my eleven-year-old existence, so I asked her mother when and if they were going to move in with her boyfriend. She replied, “None of your beeswax, as you kids say.” This was not what I wanted to hear, and I vowed I would never say, “None of your business” when asked a question by a young child.

I must confess I was part of the work-place gossip the other week. To avoid “gossip,” I went right to the source and asked one colleague if she was having sex with the other colleague in question. Afterwards, people brought to my attention that even if they were or had, they weren’t going to tell me the truth. More importantly I realized, it was none of my business.

You see, over the years, I’ve learned to see the value in none of your business. There are some things I am better off not knowing. There are some things that are better off never being in my mind. There are certain things I no longer want exposed in my subconscious.

It’s a tricky balance. Because on one hand, I don’t want to ignore the murders of the women of La Juarez. But on the other, I don’t want images of raped naked women with their nipple cut off rotting in the desert to occupy my mind before I go to bed at night as a single woman living alone.

Years ago, when I was in a workshop with Rosalyn Bruyere, a student said she kept her Qi gong practice she learned from Rosalyn for herself, and didn’t teach it to her clients. She said she wanted to just keep something for herself. I now understand that kind of privacy, when I didn’t necessarily at the time.

Sometimes none of my business is about boundaries because we don’t live in public.