We can all look back on our lives and identify good traits and bad, smart choices and blunders, luck and misfortune.
We can see how we’ve changed, improved or declined, harnessed our habits or become victims of them.
The most difficult challenge I face is accepting the fact that other people are not me. Not everyone shares my views. Not everyone believes as I do. Not everyone wants what I want. Not everyone can see what I see. Not everyone wants to take my advice.
Idiots. That’s my first response. It is unfair, inaccurate, and ungentlemanly. I feel it in the moment, but I don’t mean it in the long run. I conveniently forget the bumps upon my long road of personal evolution. I have had the benefit of decades, the cushion of privilege. I have sat like a crow on a telephone line, watching the passing traffic speed, swerve, and collide. I am not faultless, but I am wise.
Why can’t other people recognize my intelligence and accept my advice? Their life would be so easy and improve so much if they would just do as I say. I’m right. I know that I’m right. Other people who have listened to me have benefited and prospered. I have a track record. So why don’t people–people I care about like family and friends–just heed my words of wisdom and reap the rewards?
Why? Because they are not me. For whatever reasons, they are not able or willing to listen right now. They must travel along their own path. Such is the nature of free will, the most treasured of all human traits.
My acceptance of this reality does not lessen the frustration, but it does offer me a point to ponder: I should recognize this. I should be patient. I should continue to love them. I should accept them as they are, where they are.
I should, but it is not easy.
- BGT