Once upon a Distance lesson, an interesting dialogue took place:
The girlfriend often complains. I change the subject, she doesn’t like it.
And if you loved her, what would you do?
— I would listen and listen, I would let her talk.
— And if you were responsible for the future, life, prospects of your girlfriend?
— I would not listen, but sent her to the Distance.
Here, with sniper accuracy, the road that we often go to love, and the path leading to responsibility are marked.
The road of such love is paved with pity, connivance, self-indulgence. If you walk along it and do not turn anywhere, the person whom we supposedly love turns into a Nif-Nif piglet living in a light straw house. The slightest gust of wind and he will not stand. And all because once we did not want to load him with real work … And then he runs to the one who has a stone house. Doesn’t it remind you of children who sit on their parents’ necks until retirement?
The path of responsibility is not easy, full of daily worries, but at the end a stone house looms. And if a person is dear to us, we will do everything so that he successfully completes the construction. Even if he squeaks, grumbles and swears in the middle of the way.
Where is your path?
What if one day you come across a familiar pile of straw in the snow that was once a home? Don’t wait for that day to choose responsibility once and for all.
Any fairy tale ends with a choice: he chose her, she chose him. And then they lived happily ever after, only how — it is not clear … Let’s correct this omission.
Our choice is responsibility, and we choose to live in accordance with the Oath of a responsible person:
- I vow to always look after the future of the people around me and never condone their weaknesses under the pretext of loving them. Responsible hardening leads to health, soft-bodied permission to sleep under three blankets until noon leads to laziness and illness.
- I vow to lead a life that will show people how responsibility can be accompanied by sincere joy. I gladly meet the dawn with a run, work with a smile, mistakes with a willingness to correct them, and I encourage the same attitude in others.
- I swear with determination to apply harsh parenting methods to myself and to others, if I see that this will bear fruit in the future. My rigidity will come not from malice, but from responsibility for the future. And if one day I need to throw all the gadgets out of the house in order to maintain the mental health of loved ones, I will do it. The love of wasting life and killing time is against my rules.
- I vow to constantly improve the clarity of my thinking so that I can convincingly show the consequences of actions and help people take a step towards responsibility. For example, I will be able to take an active position in the parent committee and speak out against those things that instill false values, and propose something that will promote the whole class, including my children.
- I vow to build in the exercises “If I loved” and “Love myself” at an automatic level and remember that love here is about helping to become a better version of yourself and others. If I loved myself, I wouldn’t let myself waste three hours on social media. So, I allocate 15 minutes necessary for social networks and put a block on the computer. Now I am calm: I love myself.
- I swear that I will view life as a business plan and not as a groping trip in the dark, no matter how I am convinced that the latter is romantic. When making a decision, I calculate the costs and risks, and do not run ahead at random in the hope of winning and champagne.
- I swear from all varieties of love to choose responsible love and reject sacrificial, indulgent and pampering love. I choose actions based on the question “what is right?” without asking myself “what is more pleasant?”