I’m sure that you don’t see anything wrong with your behaviour; from your perception, you’re simply offering advice as a friend concerned for his wellbeing. If you pitched it that way to someone more removed from the situation and the people in it, they might believe you too. You’ve made use of the fact that people don’t look closely or listen properly most of the time. You’ve used it to your advantage in getting by in the world – appearing friendly to the right people as needed to get the things you feel you need. I don’t condemn you for clinging so desperately and relentlessly to this position even as it becomes ineffective. I don’t condemn someone using the best coping mechanisms they’ve managed to come up with from their life circumstances because that’s all any of us really have to work with. The problem is that you do.
You seek to judge something and someone you know next to nothing about, which is still far more than you should know because someone weighing in as you like to do has no business having any involvement in my life at all. You seek to condemn those that try to push forward by building their strength through all the blows of life while using your own obstacles to garner pity. You call me nasty names and criticise my personal character based on things you could never even hope to understand. Worst of all, you do all of this almost invisibly under a perceived safety net of friendship that was created with manipulation and abuse. It’s evident in the language you use, filled with the hallmarks of punishment and reward and rarely anything deeper, and not as subtly as you like to think.
It might interest you to know that the first time I stood in your vicinity in public, among many people that now knew both of us, quite a number showed no hesitation in expressing to me that they regard you and I as being worlds apart in character. They reported the contrast to be almost incomprehensible, struggling to fathom how the two of us could take the same role. Though I was the clearly and unanimously preferred candidate, it was disturbing more than reassuring to hear people speak like this. It said to me that I was now part of a circle that had allowed someone behaving the way you do to go unchallenged. It said to me that in this group, people concealed things and didn’t openly and directly say what they thought of each other. It is not a dynamic I would have sought and one that made me uniquely uncomfortable. Unfortunately, that suited you perfectly and I have little doubt that you managed to suspect or comprehend some small part of it. From that day on, I maintained an awareness of this dynamic purely to distance myself from it if it ever threatened to become detrimental. That time is now.
What you do with all this, if you even see it, is up to you. I am simply taking the only action that I can and need for myself and my life. As a person who honestly aims to one day genuinely help people for a living, I don’t seek to change others or their lives for my good. I don’t seek to change them or their circumstances to how I think they should be. I don’t talk in directives or ultimatums or threats or insults or superiority. I invite people to look at their own thoughts, feelings and behaviours to make their OWN choices with full and UNBIASED awareness. That is the gift a true friend, guide and counsellor can give. I know this from a thorough education that I fought for and dedicated myself to, as well as my life experience that I have almost equally embraced.
I don’t expect anything to change, for the better or otherwise. I equally don’t seek to block change. I seek only to align with genuine people and free myself from people that aren’t. You are indisputably the latter. You have no place in the beautiful world of human experience that I’m forging for myself and those that truly love me.
Namaste
