Well, the saying No Good Deed Goes Unpunished hit home this weekend. Trying to be nice, I ended up getting a metaphorical slap in the face. When you do nice things for someone who takes way more than you offered, it makes you wonder why you bother trying to be a decent person. At least to some people. At my core I am a kind, compassionate, loving person. Even when people have hurt me over and over with betrayal, sometimes it's hard for me to just give up on them.
Much of yesterday I wrestled with my hurt and anger about this one person. But in that process I shared my pain with three other friends who were loving, kind, compassionate and supportive to me. That reminds me to focus on those many positive people in my life and let go of the few who drag me down consistently. It is not my job to get everyone I know to appreciate me or love me, no matter how much I want them to. I don't have the ability to force people to see the good in me if they are blind to it.
A friend posted on her blog (http://ahalifedesign.com/) a suggestion for Valentines Day:
VALENTINE CHALLENGE: Each day for the next two weeks be Your Own Valentine. Do something special for yourself, something that is an expression of self-love in one way or another. This something can be big, or it can be very small. Enjoy!
I think today's gift to myself will be letting this person go who has been in my life in various ways -- loving as well as very hurtful and hard -- for more than seven years. The hurtful thing he did to me this weekend was pretty minor in comparison to some of the things that I've put up with during our years of on-again, off-again friendship, but it was the tipping point. So today I give myself permission to let him go and accept that we will never really be friends. And accept that I have done everything possible to save this friendship but he has done next to nothing. So someone I wanted to be a friend but who never really was is now merely an acquaintance. Today I will appreciate and be grateful for the 99 percent of people who love me, think highly of me and are good to me, who truly are my friends, and ignore the 1 percent who just use me, who don't appreciate the person I am, only what I can do for them.
I have been thinking about Mother Teresa's quote below, which may be a restatement of Kent Keith's Paradoxical Commandments -- it's not clear who came up with this first. But based on the content, I doubt either would expect credit. Perhaps they, too, subscribed to the understanding that all expectations are disappointments waiting to happen. Better to just do what is the right thing for me to do, be true and authentic to myself, and not hold out hope for any kind of outcome or recognition, beyond what I give myself. I especially like that last line:
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.
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