FREEDOM MONTH: DAY 26: “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.” ― David Foster Wallace
We give our time and attention to others to form bonds with them. Those bonds are not bonds of slavery, however. If we cannot give freely, we should stay away from them completely. There is no debt on the part of others because we give them anything.
I am not fond of the word he uses in this quote; “sacrifice.” I don’t believe we are here to sacrifice anything to anyone. That is too guilt-inducing a word for my tastes.
I believe we are here to share and to share freely. When we SHARE, we are not putting the other person into debt to us or anyone else. That is a big key in how we operate in relationship.
If I owe you something, I begin to form a resentment immediately. Especially when we did not negotiate that debt at the beginning. Most of us do not know we believe in the debts others owe us. Parents do this far too often in this culture. They believe children owe them a debt for having raised, fed, clothed and nurtured them to adulthood.
That is not true! It was never true! And yet, parents do this horrible disservice to their children all the time. What, then, is the implied debt? Undying loyalty and devotion and some kind of unwritten and un-negotiated contract that allows the parent to bully, criticize, correct, advise, nag and cajole that child for the rest of their lives.
And parents wonder why their children hate them and are bitter and angry. NOONE wants this kind of treatment from another person. Even when asked, your opinions are not useful in their lives. Your wisdom is what you are supposed to apply to your own damn life and let them be.
We all gather our own wisdom as we go through life. When we take that away from others, be they a spouse, friend, sibling, child or grandchild, parent, whomever; we are taking away something from them that they need to learn on their own. How to navigate life and make personal decisions is the most important gift we can give another.
Our time and attention are not to be spent on trying to “help” others make their decisions or any form of letting them know what we think about decisions they are making. Our time and attention are a gift to another to let them know we are alive and breathing and choosing to spend moments in their company, enjoying them freely and without all that shit.
If we cannot do that, then we need to get the hell out of their lives. People who are not able to make their own decisions and pay the prices for their decisions have been horribly crippled by those who do this for them. They have been victimized by those people and will be socially crippled until that person or persons get out of their way.
And everyone resents those who come into their lives and nags and criticizes and talks badly about the decisions they make. It is toxic and dysfunctional and destroys all hope of unconditional love and communication. These are the things…the NATURE OF THE WRONGS WE HAVE DONE…that are the seeds of dissension we have sown in the past.
Our recovery DEMANDS we stop doing this. If we have not, then we are still living in the dysfunction of the disease, not recovery. This IS Step Nine and it is vital to ongoing recovery. In my book, recovery is all about learning how to have healthy and useful relationships with others. This is that!
Dolphin Hug 