LIVE AND LET LIVE

     We have ideas about what people should be doing, and how they should be doing it; especially the people we love the most. If we're honest, we want them to be doing what we want them to be doing so that we can feel better. If  they are on a path we don't approve of or approaching their challenges in a way that doesn't make sense to us, we want to steer them right, and if they don't appreciate our suggestions, feelings of resentment and bitterness creep into our hearts. If we know better than to make suggestions, and we keep our mouths shut, but continue to think our scornful and judgmental thoughts, then we still have our internal bitterness.
     The only relief available is to drop our judgments and opinions and to leave them where we drop them. It's not our job to manage anyone else's life, or to tell them how to go about things and point out their mistakes. If they ask, we can share our observations, but it is not our place to volunteer solutions to situations that are problems primarily for us.
     If the problem is real, the people we love will address it in their own way and their own time and we have to trust them to do just that. We need to back off and trust them to find their way, and just keep on loving them for all the reasons that we love them.
     People and the world don't behave according to our expectations or time scale. And if we keep on wanting them to, we will suffer greatly. Let's mind our own business and leave others to mind theirs. Our happiness doesn't depend on those around us behaving the way we want them to. It is the result of knowing what is ours to worry about, and what is not.

I let the people I love find their way in life without my meddling and interference. I give them the freedom and respect to be who they are.