Acknowledge the Reality of Other People’s Feelings

Each Monday, I discuss my Scrap Happy project based on Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun.
This week’s Scrap Happy prompt is to lighten up. One way to do this is to acknowledge the reality of other people’s feelings. For scrapbookers, this could be either really easy or really difficult. We want to document the stories of our lives. As social creatures, this usually means documenting the stories of other people’s lives as well. They might not want their photograph taken. They might not want anything about their life memorialized. They might not want certain aspects of their lives preserved in your scrapbooks.

What is a scrapbooker to do?

If they do not want their photograph taken, then maybe you shouldn’t take it. Is there another way you can include them in your scrapbook without their photograph, such as a piece of memorabilia or a photograph of an object that reminds you of them? Perhaps a compromise is needed. Talk to this person about why you want their photograph and tell them exactly how you will use the photograph (For instance, the photo will only be in my scrapbook. I won’t post it to facebook.).

Rubin mentions that she acknowledges her children’s feelings by writing them down. She uses this strategy as a way to keep the peace. She argues that children do not want to be ignored and by acknowledging their feelings, they were much more likely to do whatever it is you wanted them to do in the first place. This fits quite well into scrapbooking. Imagine all the things you might end up writing down! Think about all the stories that you might never have considered scrapbooking until you wrote them down while parenting.

Acknowledging the reality of other people’s feelings might be the most challenging Scrap Happy task, but it might also be the most important.

Related Posts:

• Scrap Happy: Lighten Up

Stephanie