It has taken me a long time to figure it out, but it has finally dawned on me that giving a person an invitation is not neutral. The invitation itself presents decisions on the recipient. The person receiving the invitation has to decide whether or not I really want them there or whether or not I am merely being polite. And then the prospective guest must decide if they really want to attend. Being a guest has it's own set of responsibilities too of course. My friend Peppy often uses the term of some people that they are "social cripples, in other words, the guest does nothing to make an effort to be sociable and enliven the event. But I was thinking specifically of an invitation given by me to a friend. This was prompted by a comment of Wendy, who when speaking of Nova Scotia, reported that they only came to Nova Scotia to humor us. Ken and I bought our property and the following Spring, we invited our friends the Ely's and the Mitchell's to come and see the place. It never dawned on me that they might not want to come, but it turned out they did not really want to come to this out of the way place, but they felt obligated to visit us, because we had invited them to come for a visit. Of course the rest is history, because they loved the place and bought a lot next door and built not one but two houses. I was startled to hear her remarks but as this comment was spoken just last summer, I realized that I have been inviting people to events all my life with no thought of whether or not they really want to be invited.
The upshot of this thinking is to make me very careful to issue invitations. In fact I have changed my patterns. I have told all our Family and friends that they are invited to visit us at any time and in any place, but I am not issuing and invitations. They have to tel us when they would like to visit and then we will check our schedule. I suspect this all comes from my confidence which sometimes leads to arrogance. It actually never occurred to me that an invitation could be perceived as a problem. But now I know, so in the future, I have no wish to impose on my friends and relatives, so, is you want to come and visit us, just call or e mail and we would love to have you visit. It never crossed my mind that saying no was a problem.
Tonight just as the sun was setting, Ken and I went out to the hot tub. We drank a glass of wine and toasted the gorgeous day. The sea was calm and still and the sky was bright blue with the moon up as the sun was setting. We have retreated to the bedroom and are eating a light meal upstairs, while we read our books. There is nothing finer!!
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