In August 2001, rhythm and blues superstar Mary J. Blige released the soulful classic, "No More Drama." About 6.5 million albums have been sold worldwide, earning triple-platinum status. To date, it is one of the greatest R&B albums ever made. Its title song, moreover, is one of the most applicable, inspirational messages ever written, produced, covered, ever to leak from a set of speakers.
It was with these ideas - and perhaps more appropriately, with this bias - in mind that I recently passed along the Mary J. song, "No More Drama" to a close friend of mine who is currently experiencing "boy problems."
It's been my practice for the past three or four years to send song lyrics or music videos to the people that I love, via e-mail, Facebook or text message. I've found it to be a nice, unconventional way of saying, "I'm thinking about you" or "I'm sorry you're having a rough time" or "Congratulations" or at the very least, "Check out this new song I'm listening to." More than that though, as someone who is hesitant to give people advice, especially when they don't explicitly ask for it, I've found that sending along someone else's words to a person experiencing pain alleviates the burden of having to supply my own.\nIn this instance, the "no more drama" sentiment rang loud and clear. I'm the first to admit that I don't always know what the "right" thing to say is or the best way to articulate it. And ultimately, how much does it matter what I think anyway? I am more than 400 miles away and have never met the majority of the people involved in what has been coined my friend's most recent "quarter-life crisis."
What's more important in times like these, I think, is to say to a friend, "I'm there for you, and if you want to talk about whatever you are going through, I am here to listen." Solving the problem comes later.
Interestingly enough, this has been the first of many drama-related issues for my friends during the past three weeks or so. The coveted feeling that I could avoid drama by avoiding certain people or circumstances seems misguided. Naively, I assumed that as my groups of friends and I grew up and our lives became more complicated, the drama between us would slowly disintegrate.
But looking back, the drama I see and experience today differs little from the gossip and backstabbing I remember from middle school or high school. Change the setting, change the players, but look closely and the scene is the same.
I can't say that I fully understand why. As busy college students with extracurricular commitments or jobs to focus on, we should have less availability and less desire to pay attention to things that don't matter. On some level, I know that drama can be entertaining, especially when you're one of the people not directly involved in the controversy. Still, it is exhausting after a while.
Somewhere, I know there's a silver lining. Extremes come in pairs - with the bad comes the good. Although drama breeds stress, not all stress is bad. It motivates us. It reaffirms our meaningful relationships. Drama connects us to others and is sometimes an unavoidable fact of life, there to make us stronger and smarter in the end.
It celebrates what's good in life. At times, things and people get so petty that they unintentionally highlight what is really important. In this way, drama brings us back to basics, to the meaning behind age-old adages that we often quote but fail to exemplify, about how to treat people and how best to secure success and happiness for ourselves and others.
Drama, then, is sometimes necessary, if and when it concerns a legitimate problem between two or more people. For all other times, I say let's focus on something more meaningful. In the words of Mary J., "No more drama."
Stephanie's column runs biweekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at s.waties@cavalierdaily.com.
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