One of the hazards of being a compassionate and empathetic person is just because you might have some understanding about people's behaviour, does not mean that all behaviour is acceptable.
A friend challenged me recently with the question, "Do I think that I need to save and rescue people?"
This question made me have a good look at my motives from a self reflective perspective and my conclusion in short was "no". However, I did discover that lines are blurry when it comes to boundaries and unacceptable behaviour. For those of us who live our lives from a locum of altruism and empathy, we really need to explore this in ourselves, else WE can become part of the problem. We do this by enabling those who might behave rudely or badly by constantly making excuses for them with statements like "they don't know any better", "It was my fault too", "they are not well" etc etc.
We need to take our own responsibility at being able to identify where our boundaries are between giving people space and compassion and when to put our hands up to say NO that's not acceptable. To not know this, or let this value drop in ourselves, may also find us constantly sacrificing our needs for others which only leads to bitterness and resentment.
There begs the question what is the difference between sacrificial and unconditional love? To answer this would mean looking at our own attachments to love. It's a BIG question! But an integral one, I feel. As children we can't explore all this within ourselves, and as adults we may be learning lots of stuff that we now have to UNLEARN that is buried deep within us from childhood. As adults we must now be responsible for how we feel and respond to the world around us.
This can not include ignoring or pretending that something doesn't exist in the hope that it will just go away on its own — that surely must fall into 'enabling' again.
We need to be brave enough to talk about what's bothering us and to learn from it so that all involved can grow and develop into more of a self loving, and loving person that I believe we are all striving to be. To move through our self reflections and to increase our self awareness will always entail going in deeply, which requires communication and great vulnerability and leaps of faith and trust. Just because we've always done something one way does not mean that we are doing it right. Change is the nature of life, and nothing changes without loss, and only those who are brave enough will embrace this. Kia kaha if you are one of those courageous folk and thank you for changing yourself as you are also changing the world.
