Supporting the direction our friends are going in, even if we do not personally agree with

I think of my brother growing up. I'm 16 years older than he, and it was tempting to share with him all kinds of pearls of wisdom I had learned. But then I thought, you know what? Life is an adventure. If I tell him step by step how to achieve certain things, and what to avoid, I will be robbing him of the excitement of discovering what his life is all about, which could be very very different from my perception of life.

Each person's life is very different. Each person sees Truth in their own way. Each person's attitude toward Truth is different, and we must allow our friends to learn about life in their own way, and accept the uniqueness of how they live and what they value.

Let me share with you the wisdom my parents exercised when I was a teenager. I was a hippie, and my parents were worried about my future. It was important to them that I decide on a profession and go to college to get training to prepare for it. Well, they got more and more tense about the issue, and the more they pressured me, the less interested I became in doing as they suggested.

Finally, the arguing in the house got so intense that I ran away from home. Well, they found me, and when I was back home, I told them, "I don't want to work, I don't want to go to college. I just want to quit school and find a cheap apartment." It was my way of telling them to back off. And back off they did. They completely stopped complaining about anything I did. They allowed me to go out with my boyfriend every night, and what was nice was they knew when I came home I was usually hungry, so they kept the refrigerator stocked with the things I liked to eat.

Well, as fate would have it, after
short while my boyfriend and I broke up. To get some consolation, and a change of atmosphere, I went to spend the weekend with a girlfriend. Well, this friend of mine, Ellen, was in college, and that weekend she told me all about what a great experience it was.

Therefore, when I returned home, I said "Mom and Dad, I want to go to college". It was when they showed me acceptance, and loved me for the person I was, that I ended up agreeing with them about my future.

My feeling is, we need to give our friends the freedom to be exactly who they are. Let them do what works for them. This way we will be supporting them as they fulfill their destiny.

♬   Billy Joel: My Life