It's Not Always About You

It's next to impossible to be in a close relationship of any type without experiencing conflict. This is true of families, marriages, friendships, sibling relationships, work relationships, and so on.

Life goes along peacefully, all is well, and SMACK! There it is.

CONFLICT.

Someone has hurt your feelings, disrespected you, acted in a way you disagreed with. Broken the law, made a poor decision, hurt someone else, whatever. It was something. With all these feelings roiling, broiling, stewing and spewing,

this is THE time to remember...

It's Not Always About You!

We know how we feel. We know we're hurt, angry, disillusioned. We're wired to know how we feel. It's our job to know how we feel. BUT...that doesn't mean we close our mind to how others may be feeling. Those particular "others" that hurt us. It's comfortable in our stand of trees but we can't forget the forest. All of this to say...

People rarely do things to us , but rather,
they do things for themselves.

Now, instead of the target, we've got to realize that we're just part of the fallout. That may not be comfortable. When we're hurt we don't necessarily want to let go; stop placing blame. After all, when something hurts - when things aren't right - it has to be someone's FAULT.

Hmmm...we're not the TARGET. But we're still hurting. How to process that? How to act? React? This is a whole different perspective.

I'm not going to say this will be the situation EVERY time. But I will go out on a limb and say it's going to be the case MOST of the time. If you're open to the probability that you were never an intended victim - but an incidental casualty - you'll have to determine if a "payback" attitude (or even actions) will be the appropriate response. Could it be that an honest, open conversation might be the balm to heal the situation? Let the person know how you're feeling. They may not even be aware how their actions have affected others.

As an optimist, this seems like a prudent, win-win course of action to me. If a situation is beyond this "remedy," well, then, at least this won't likely make things worse.

I pray you and I can always see the beauty of the forest from our place among the trees.

Have a great weekend!