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Open Letter
Jan. 8th, 2005 05:52 pmFurther to Lederhosen's 'Beyond My Control' treatise...
One way to look at this is to accept that other people are ALWAYS beyond your control. Who wants the responsibility of ordering & controlling other people's lives? What is NEVER beyond your control is how you relate & react to the personalities & situations that result from your interaction with other people. The first choice in this is simple: To react &/or relate... or not. To enter into other people's lives is to accept the consequences of that interaction, only some of which is within your control - i.e. YOUR actions & interactions. You can (hopefully) only do what you think is best for the person(s) involved (including yourself) & the situation. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing... to cease interaction at the point where any further action on your part is either pointless, hurtful, or both... a kind of time-out until the situation either passes or changes, at which point normal play is resumed. On the other hand, to take a deliberate step back is not doing nothing, but is a display of intent, an announcement of disengagement, a statement of control. How this may be interpreted by the other parties involved IS beyond your control, but self-preservation should always take priority over keeping a terminally ill friendship or relationship alive just for appearances sake. Whether you choose to explain your action or inaction is entirely up to you & your reading of the situation.
To illustrate the shoe on the other foot (??)... I have recently lost all contact with a good friend of several years standing. In hindsight I can see a scaling down of interaction over most of last year, which at the time I put down to busy & conflicting schedules, but we did at least talk to each other's answering machines on a regular basis. About 10 weeks ago... all communication ceased. No arguments, accusations, recriminations... or explanations, just a series of unanswered messages from myself to them - even the obligatory season's greetings. I have been disengaged, presumably for their own good reasons. This course of action taken by my friend is, of course, beyond my control. The only control I have is, once again, over my own reactions & feelings. Yes, I'm puzzled, done some soul-searching, reviewed past events, mildly hurt. But in the absence of any explanation, I can only hypothesise so much... not enough to assign any blame to either of us, but also not enough to close the door satisfactorily. I can only accept the situation as it stands & move on. Regrets, I'll have a few... but who doesn't?
It sounds cold-hearted, but one must remain objective about things & people that are beyond one's control. Sure, you do what you can for them when you can, but your own balance is what's most important. You can't live their lives for them, but neither should you let them live yours for you.
Whose life is it anyway?
One way to look at this is to accept that other people are ALWAYS beyond your control. Who wants the responsibility of ordering & controlling other people's lives? What is NEVER beyond your control is how you relate & react to the personalities & situations that result from your interaction with other people. The first choice in this is simple: To react &/or relate... or not. To enter into other people's lives is to accept the consequences of that interaction, only some of which is within your control - i.e. YOUR actions & interactions. You can (hopefully) only do what you think is best for the person(s) involved (including yourself) & the situation. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing... to cease interaction at the point where any further action on your part is either pointless, hurtful, or both... a kind of time-out until the situation either passes or changes, at which point normal play is resumed. On the other hand, to take a deliberate step back is not doing nothing, but is a display of intent, an announcement of disengagement, a statement of control. How this may be interpreted by the other parties involved IS beyond your control, but self-preservation should always take priority over keeping a terminally ill friendship or relationship alive just for appearances sake. Whether you choose to explain your action or inaction is entirely up to you & your reading of the situation.
To illustrate the shoe on the other foot (??)... I have recently lost all contact with a good friend of several years standing. In hindsight I can see a scaling down of interaction over most of last year, which at the time I put down to busy & conflicting schedules, but we did at least talk to each other's answering machines on a regular basis. About 10 weeks ago... all communication ceased. No arguments, accusations, recriminations... or explanations, just a series of unanswered messages from myself to them - even the obligatory season's greetings. I have been disengaged, presumably for their own good reasons. This course of action taken by my friend is, of course, beyond my control. The only control I have is, once again, over my own reactions & feelings. Yes, I'm puzzled, done some soul-searching, reviewed past events, mildly hurt. But in the absence of any explanation, I can only hypothesise so much... not enough to assign any blame to either of us, but also not enough to close the door satisfactorily. I can only accept the situation as it stands & move on. Regrets, I'll have a few... but who doesn't?
It sounds cold-hearted, but one must remain objective about things & people that are beyond one's control. Sure, you do what you can for them when you can, but your own balance is what's most important. You can't live their lives for them, but neither should you let them live yours for you.
Whose life is it anyway?
