- There are many ways to live and grow as there are people. Our own ways are the only ways that should matter to us.
—Evelyn Mandel— Letting other people grow, develop, live their own experiences as they must takes courage and acceptance of the knowledge that our responsibility in this life is to our own healthy development—not to controlling someone else’s.
It’s not easy to let go of someone with whom we want to share a particular path in life; however, no two of us are destined for exactly the same lessons today or any day. We must each find our own way and develop those opportunities we meet that are certain to enhance the lessons our souls have been created for.
Our need to control someone else generally results from our own insecurities about life’s meaning. Because we lack understanding of our own personal worth, we look for it in someone else’s devotion to us—a devotion that, in time, we squeeze the life from.
We cannot control another’s behavior, and yet we try. And the more we try the greater the barriers between us become. Trust is all we finally have that each of us is progressing, according to our own pace, in rightful company. We cannot force what is not meant to be.
My own pace and direction are all that I need to be concerned with today.