Emotional Indulgence
Feb 17th, 2008 by Ree Joy
I have a dear friend who wants to be involved in everything, even if she didn’t have the time for them. I do not know if she even understands what she’s doing, or why, but, in my worst of times after she’s let me down, after all the allowances I’ve made for her, I just want to go back to staying behind my rock and simply watch my world go by once more.
Going out in a world where innate respect for personal space has shrunk in proportion to the rising popularity for reality tv is tantamount to committing suicide for the emotionally-weak. And, if it is weakness to simply want to avoid a messy emotional entanglement, then I, too, risk dying everytime I venture into another’s personal hell.
People always disappoint, sooner or later. And I’ve found, these past few months, in involving myself with one nonprofit project after another, that a capacity to forgive your fellowman their own lacks is a disposition acquired like one acquires taste.
At work the other day, our HR person had me, among others, take the employer-sponsored RightPath (rightpath.com) test. I thought it was decent of them, to pay the $95 fee, just so we could both get a handle on what kind of employee I was. My profile was judged as that of a “supporter-blender”. It was found that I was one who found it easier to achieve success at work through accommodation, and that the opposite, although doable, would be a struggle for me.
I hate tests. Always have. They can mislead, and often do. Still, we all need our points of reference; at work, at play, at life. No shit.
Every point of understanding I’ve achieved in the course of my lifetime has ran through understanding others through the prism of my own emotional ups and downs, up through accepting my own capacities through watching others carve their own hearts to ribbons. Some things have been easy, others have been most difficult.
Every night is one more brick on the proverbial wall, every day one more chance to forgive myself or someone else. It doesn’t get any more tireder than that.
I have a dear friend I work with at church, and at charity projects; and she wants to be informed on everything, requires she be involved in every project, and I’m almost sure that she does not see how that makes her so much harder to bear. She brings out the worst in me. She brings out the best in me.
