When I no longer count on others to keep their word, then I free them from my mind, and I free myself from misery.
I have been counting on others to keep their word, and that is why it has been miserable. Even when I’ve had every reason to be happy, I’ve allowed myself to be miserable, worrying about whether I will be able to hold onto my happiness! And the reason to worry about this is because “holding onto my happiness” to a large degree depends on other people keeping their word. The only reason that another person would not keep their word to me would be because they didn’t want to, or they felt they couldn’t. Therefore if the person did not want to keep their word to me, or for some reason they felt they just couldn’t, why would I want them to? Do I really want someone to keep an agreement that they do not want to keep? Do I really feel people should be forced to do things that they don’t feel they want to do? Why would I force anyone to do anything against their will?
Is it because I want to avoid misery, thus I am willing to inflict misery upon others? Do I really think that if I force another to keep a promise that I will escape the ultimate misery? Yet it is the truth that more damage has been done to others by persons leading lives of quiet desperation, that is, doing what they felt they “had” to do than ever was done by person freely doing what they wanted to do.
When I give others freedom, I give my self the freedom as well.
Yes, letting someone off a promise or commitment made me look like it will hurt me in the short run, but it will never damage me in the long run, because when I give others freedom, I give myself the freedom as well. Thus I am free from the agonies and the sorrows, as well as the attacks on my dignity and self-worth when I force another person to keep a promise to me that they do not want to keep. The longer damage will far outweigh the shorter, as everyone who has tried to hold on to another person and their word has discovered.
What I give to others, I give to myself.
Give others what they need, without expecting anything in return. In the kind of one-way giving would my freedom be found, for I have discovered what the Universe has experienced: what I give to others, I give to my self. What goes around, comes around. Life is not “for getting.” Life is “for giving”, and in order to do that, I need to be forgiving to others, especially those who did not give me what I expected to get!
I am that I am, I am what I am not, I am!
If another person does not keep an agreement, or give me what I am expecting in return, simply allow them to walk their path, make their choices, and create their own experiences of themselves. And whatever they have not given me, I will not miss, for I know that there is “more where that came from”, and that they are not my source of it, but I am!
