most of my life i have been what is called “a people pleaser.” not that i often succeed. like most people pleasers, i seldom do. people pleasing was a strategy i adopted at a young age because it seemed to keep me and others safer. i stopped paying attention to what i wanted and started paying attention to what others wanted. maybe if i anticipated someone else’s need and met it they would be happier and they would be nicer to me or someone else, and i would feel happier. for a long time i probably would have told you that this strategy was designed to make you happy, not me. that was not true, but i could not see that. for an even longer time, i would have told you that i wasn’t doing this at all. that also would not have been true.
as someone who just had a birthday, my new year’s resolution is to stop pleasing other people and start pleasing god. what seems to please god is that i choose wherever possible to be love. for years i probably would have characterized my people pleasing as loving actions. it turns out they weren’t. and since being love is about being and not doing, its not all about actions.
it turns out that other people are entitled to be unhappy if they want to be. they are entitled to be angry, sad & scared and to stay there. it is not my job to change the way other people are. it is my job to love them exactly as they are because that is what the big love would have me do. it counts on me and everyone else who chooses to be love to be its eyes, ears, arms and body. sometimes being love looks like being mother theresa washing the hands and feet of lepers. often it does not.
the big love will show me what it is that it would have me do. usually whatever it would have me do is right in front of me and not particularly glamorous. it may not involve washing people’s body parts. these days i am called to write about discernment. i am writing about it because i need to learn more about discernment. i need to learn more about discernment because i need to discern how to be god’s love, which is what i’ve discerned that i am here to be.
today i realized that means giving up pleasing other people or focusing on that in any way, and choosing instead to please god. the funny thing is that unlike with people, i can’t displease god but i can please god. since god is all there is and is unconditional love god loves me exactly as i am no matter what. it always has and it always will. it allows me to have free choice and that includes people pleasing. people pleasing is part of the strategy that i used to get me to the place where i am now so that i can choose something else. so one could argue that by pleasing people that pleased god because it brought me here.
anyway, here i am, god. i do hope, selfishly, that it will be pleasing to me to please you.
please, please me, woah yeah, like i please you.
Love the e.e. Cummings style.
I have been working with equanimity this year. this speaks to that