Are you ever frustrated with people you care about? Are you more frustrated because it seems as if they just won’t change?
A man tried everything he could think of to eradicate the weeds in his lawn. Finally, in desperation, he wrote to his local department of agriculture, asking advice and listing every method he had tried.
He received a reply back. It said, “We suggest you learn to love them!”
The same could be said about marriage and friendship. We may feel exasperated by the faults and idiosyncrasies of others. We believe the relationship would be perfect if only they would change that annoying habit or correct that irritating behavior.
So we embark on a campaign to “get rid of the weeds” – to get someone we care about to change. We may nag and cajole and plead and bribe. And in the end, we feel frustrated because they are still the same.
The truth is, we cannot, and should not, attempt to eradicate the “weeds” we find in others’ lives. We can never change others. They can change, but we can’t change them. The will to change must come from within themselves. Rather, our task is simply to learn to love them, weeds and all.
Isn’t this the way we want them to treat us? And besides, like a lovely garden, they become more attractive to us when we are not focused on the weeds. We might even begin to enjoy them so much that we remember what drew us to them in the first place! -- Steve Goodier
Image: flickr.com/Mathias Liebing
