When I understood that neither parents, nor family, nor friends, nor anyone in the world could offer me anything but pain, insults, and wounds, I resolved to stop living for the world and to dedicate my few remaining days in this life to the Lord. I understood that I had no one in the world except God.
—Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives
Category: FRIENDSHIP
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False obligations are all the kind of things that, if you could do them, would make you abnormally wonderful, outstanding, quite a lot better and more sensitive-looking than other people with abilities and opportunities similar to yours. Our ordinary obligations—like cleaning house, gardening, repairing things, being faithful to friends, and doing our fair share of the work in family life—don’t make us look us especially wonderful or exceptional. People who are burdened with a lot of false obligations invariably fall down on what most of us consider to be normal obligations. They tend not to help others with anything. They make promises and then break them without giving it a second thought. They tell you they’ll be at your party or meet you on a certain afternoon, and nine times out of ten they’ll back out the last minute with a very unconvincing excuse. Even though they are constantly getting after themselves for not loving and being kind to everybody, they have almost no sense of obligation to other people and are completely inconsiderate most of the time. They rarely notice or feel guilty about the everyday obligations they could be living up to. But they feel terribly guilty and miserable about the false obligations they can’t live up to.
Who is God? Who Am I? Who Are You?
Dee Pennock -
If someone seems like they’re doing just fine without support, it’s a lie — a lie that upholds the myth that if you just follow the rules, you, too, can ride a wave of self-reliance to happiness, and financial stability, to some understanding of a perfect life.
How to Show Up For Your Friends Without Kids — and How to Show Up For Kids and Their Parents
ANNE HELEN PETERSEN
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Parents feel like their friends without kids have left them behind and are flaky. Kid-free people feel like their parent friends only want to hang out with other parents and are also flaky. Parents feel like society is incredibly hostile to them; single people feel like society is incredibly hostile to them; partnered people without kids feel like society is incredibly hostile to them.
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This is where I say very clearly: parents, I know it feels like you live in a never-ending hurricane season. You need to talk to your friends without kids, and you need to figure out ways to be in their lives, even if you think their lives are easier and should naturally bend towards yours.
And people without kids, I know it feels like the world thinks we’re weirdos and parents don’t understand the very real struggles and fears that accompany our lives. We also need to be more understanding of our friends with kids, and figure out how to balance our own often more flexible lives with some of the more inflexible demands of their lives.
How to Show Up For Your Friends Without Kids — and How to Show Up For Kids and Their Parents
ANNE HELEN PETERSEN
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You have a lovely text threads with friends from your childhood or your 20s that pop off every few days.
But let’s be real: it’s just not enough. When you let yourself think about it, you feel incredibly isolated.
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But a whole lot of this ethos stems from a deep-seated belief in individualism. We think that just because we can “do it ourselves” (and by “it,” I mean raising kids, performing domestic labor, caring for others, finding economic security, living life) that we should do it ourselves….and our ability to do so evinces innate moral fortitude. We’re better people, in other words, because we did it alone.
The Dark Heart of Individualism
ANNE HELEN PETERSEN -
If you are constantly canceling plans with your friends, not following through, neglecting to answer messages for days and weeks on end, ignoring invitations, and not showing up for people at very important moments in their lives — that’s not introversion, that’s isolation.
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Real introversion is not rude or selfish, nor does it involve the complete disregard of other people’s needs.
Those behaviors only happen when we’re isolating. We usually isolate first if we have been hurt, and then more often if we do not want to be held accountable for some set of behaviors we know aren’t the best though we can’t seem to get a hold of them.
The Difference Between Being an Introvert and Isolating Yourself -
“I definitely have had friendships and moments with people from different backgrounds and in different stages of their lives…brief encounters where you know someone for a few days and it seems you’ve had a whole lifetime, and it shapes who you are as a person. To me that’s like the most comforting or best thing in life, when you have a little connection or you both find something funny, and it makes you feel not alone.”
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Our friendship was not entirely pure, although it’s worth acknowledging that few friendships are truly pure. Most friendships, to varying degrees, are based on proximity and convenience.
Bimbo Ubermensch
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It’s impossible to know someone for too long and too well without inevitably despising them. It’s better to space out your meetings with your friends and loved ones so you don’t get to know them too well and end up hating them.
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The moderate person has many relationships, and does not depend on a single person to fulfill all of his needs of love and friendship. If this person’s circumstances change, he may become troubled, because he depends on this [one] person completely. The more relationships a person has, the more accepting he becomes of the boundaries of others. Therefore, we have to have many mature and sound relationships.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Build Boundaries
SO GOOD QUOTES 