People lie all the time, whether it’s premeditated or it just happens, it’s not something we can deny. We all tell little white lies on a fairly regular basis. We leave information out of stories, we make up excuses, or we just flat out don’t tell the truth.

In this episode of our beloved series Friends, Ross digs up his old keyboard and shows Phoebe some of his compositions from his teenage years. Phoebe is astonished by his talents however Monica and Rachel are wishing they had ear plugs. Of course the two of them just play along and agree that he hasn’t lost his charm with the keyboard. Ross takes their praise so literally that he replaces Phoebe as Central Perk’s entertainer. After one of his performances, the amount of costumers dwindled down to only a few. Phoebe loves Ross but she misses playing her music at the cafe. The girls then decide to tell Phoebe that they’ve been lying and that in reality Ross sucks. Phoebe proclaims to Rachel and Monica that Ross just isn’t appreciated in his time and that she’d give anything to have that. So they figure ‘why not?’ and Monica breaks the news to Phoebe that she sucks too. Classic Phoebe thinks they’re just saying this to make her feel good but little does she know that she has it completely backwards.

Our friends Monica and Rachel have been telling a little white lie all along. They pretend that Phoebe is a great musician just to make her feel better about herself. People do this a lot. Lying to people to make them feel better just has some sort of appeal to us. We are compassionate, empathetic, and sympathetic beings (for the most part) and this contributes to the feeling that we don’t want to let someone down or crush their dreams or all that they’ve worked for and love. We want people to do their best and we don’t want to be the ones to tell them that their best isn’t quite good enough. So instead of telling people the truth (that they suck) we instead tell them what they want to hear (that they’re a prodigy). But if it was you who wanted someone else’s opinion, would you want them to be honest or would you just want them to say what you want to hear? I know it’s hard to take constructive criticism. It makes you doubt yourself and feel like you aren’t good enough, but it will help you become certain and be good enough. If we say that we’d want the honest truth then why don’t we give it to others? Because we don’t want to see the sadness and disappointment in their face, we don’t want to be the person who put it there, we don’t want to tear down their self esteem; we want them to succeed? Telling them a lie isn’t going to lead them to success; it will just hold them back. People need to be more like Joey and always speak their mind (even if they aren’t exactly sure what the heck they’re saying).

Just a heads up: the title of this post isn’t directly related with the content. However, it is the title of the episode from which the content derives.

Monica takes her new position as head chef but she isn’t quite ready for what that entails… a bunch of employees who love to bully her. None of them listen to her instructions or do what she ever so politely asks of them. Instead they like to make a practical joke out of her. Monica doesn’t have the courage to stand up for herself and enforce her commands. She then hatches a plot to hire Joey and stage his firing in order to scare the other workers. When Joey falls through with the plan, she realizes that she must fix the problem on her own. The employees continue to bully her until she finally has the last straw after being locked in the freezer and having marinara sauce spill all over her clothes. She finally tells the employees that they need to start listening to her. Joey helps persuade the stubborn crew by going through with their original plan. Once he was fired, all the other workers took Monica seriously and she finally was the boss.

Confrontation just has a negative connotation to it from the start. We associate confrontation with conflict. Quite frankly, this is because with conflict comes an impending confrontation. For Monica, the conflict was the lack of respect from her employees. There was a confrontation that needed to be had, but she chose to avoid it like the plague. People don’t like confrontation. Maybe because it’s more aggressive than a simple conversation so we back away from it. I feel like these days people are more willing to let things slide rather than actually fixing the problem and making it better. Honestly, I am probably more guilty of this than Monica. At least she finally confronted the workers. I haven’t even confronted my roommate about her late-night Skype conversations. Or her excessive phone calls to her needy boyfriend. And the list just keeps going and it’s never going to stop, or at least decrease, until I can scrounge up the guts to tell her that those things are just not okay. Why don’t people of the 21st century like confrontation? All throughout history people have loved confrontation. Just go through a history book and look at all the wars that we’ve fought. Now everyone is anti-war, casualty-averse. I suppose this aversion to confrontation is good in that sense, but not in our singular, individual lives. If you aren’t willing to confront someone, then you’re never going to get anything done. For me, I avoid confrontation because I am afraid I’ll be shot down or that I’ll offend the ‘confrontee’. Confrontation may also be avoided due to laziness. People just don’t feel like starting an argument with someone else and this isn’t something that can be done for you. Confrontation is something that everyone just has to suck it up and do. It’s what makes us independent; makes us learn to stand up for ourselves and do things on our own. It teaches us that if we want change, then we have to make it happen. Confrontation doesn’t only have to have a negative connotation; it can also have a positive one. It helps us become individuals. So I guess this means I can’t have Joey come and tell my roommate off for me anymore. Rats.

So if you haven’t already guessed, I am a Friends enthusiast. As a matter of fact, the show debuted the year I was born, 1994. I’ve always had a special bond with Friends. Perhaps it’s because I grew up watching it with my mother every week. Or maybe it’s because when I was three I concussed myself whilst dancing to the theme song. Whichever one floats your boat. The purpose of this blog is not for me to smother you with ravishing reviews of each episode, season, or actor. Each week I will select a particular scene from an episode. I will provide a brief summary of the scene including particular moments or details that I believe are relevant to the topic I wish to discuss. The scene will be related to something that I might have experienced or that everyone experiences at some point. My goal is to explore common situations presented to us, the lessons that we learn, and the generalizations or assumptions that we all make. So let’s begin!

In The one with the hypnosis tape, the gang meets the fiancé of Phoebe’s eighteen year old brother Frank. At first the group, mostly Phoebe, was excited for Frank. The second they met Alice, or Mrs. Knight as Frank calls her- force of habit, their opinions change. I’ll give you a hint, Alice was once Frank’s teacher and is twice his age. The group doesn’t let their feelings show… that is until Frank and Alice begin kissing- then came the dropping of jaws and the twisting of foreheads in disgust. Mrs. Knight confronts the age issue and Phoebe makes a comments that she thought they didn’t realize it. In response, Alice tells her that when it comes to love, age is but a number.

First impressions can often affect our judgements dramatically. We always hear the idiom “don’t judge a book by it’s cover,” but for some reason that’s almost impossible to do. We judge everything by how it is presented to us for the first time whether we want to or not. Anything new that we aren’t accustomed to or anything that we do not know enough about gets judged almost immediately upon first encounter. The group judges Mrs. Knight and her relationship with Frank based on her age, her interaction with Frank, and her attitude towards their age difference. When we observe others, we subconsciously evaluate their actions, appearance, and attitude. We then take these evaluations and create our own standpoint on the subject. I will admit that I am very guilty of this. If someone says they haven’t, they are lying through their teeth. I think that making judgements is just an inescapable part of life. We are all entitled to our opinions. However, with these assumptions we need to be fair and give things a chance. We can judge them by their cover, but we have to let them reaffirm or change our views. People aren’t very willing to have their opinions changed. Phoebe was dead set against her younger brother marrying a woman who was twenty years his elder. Instead of giving Alice a chance to show that their love should be accepted, Phoebe forced her to call off the engagement. Why are we so quick to judge but so unwilling to have that judgement tested? Are we scared it will lose its validity? This then brings upon the notion that people don’t want to be wrong; that we always want to be right, to have the last word, to be invincible. Now, that may be taking it a tad far. I think that all of this judgement and stubbornness comes from the underlying thought that we can never be wrong because if we are that means that we have failed ourselves or that we are, ourselves, not just wrong about that one thing but that we may be wrong about everything else in our lives. Maybe if everyone was as oblivious as Joey, none of this would matter- but we’re not.