Other People’s Obsessions

Several of my loved ones, who are very good people, made some very big, bad choices.  They destroyed families, friendships, and themselves.  My philosophy could not encompass this.  Believe me, my first reaction was to just cut them loose.  Cut all ties.  For the first time, my love for other persons came face to face with my own morality, and the two were not compatible.  I had to choose between love and judgement.  I had to decide who I was going to be—one who loves or one who judges.  It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

The Apostle Paul described love like this:  “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails.”[i]  I had heard those words a hundred times, mostly at weddings, and nodded in agreement, but I had never been tested in real life.  I am none of these things if I abandon people.  If I respond to others’ desperate behavior with my own, I add to the darkness in the world.  So now I choose to be one who loves.

         What I had discounted in my prior thinking is that people don’t do what they want to do, necessarily, but what they have to.  They create and feed their own demons, and it is not for us to decide whether it is warranted.  People deal with catastrophic loss—death, illness, and destruction.  They deal with unspeakable abuse, neglect, and violence.  That doesn’t mean that lesser traumas are less traumatizing.  The fear is real to the one who is afraid, regardless of our opinions about it.  It doesn’t matter whether the person is three years old or ninety-three, or whether we find their suffering justified or not.  We don’t even have to decide who’s right or wrong.  We don’t have to judge other people’s issues.  We only have to be willing to open our hearts in the face of them—to anything and everything.[ii]  Whatever their obsession, it’s none of our business. 

Read more in my book, The Message is Love.

[i] Corinthians 13:4-8a

[ii]  Singer, Michael A.  The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself.  Oakland: New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2007.