The Need To Step Back A Little.

At times, we may be just too close to others. So close that we find ourselves easily influenced, easily offended, easily distracted by matters of personal nature and choices of others. It can feel good to be so involved with someone else’s life or choices. Yet, it can also serve as a trap that can easily takes our attention away from dealing or addressing our own personal matters.

I think and believe that’s what Jesus meant when he said:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Luke 6:49)

To be so sold or engaged into the lives of others and yet so blind of our own lives has the potential to benefit nobody. It can turn into one person becoming dependent of the other, or obsessed with the other person.

For every minute of attention we volunteer to something that’s not of ours, is a minute we could have used to address something of ours that’s begging for our attention.

There may be times when there’s a need to get close to another in order to help. An invite can probably come through to request the help. The invite will either be honored or rejected for various reasons like someone seeking family or professional help with an issue. In other circumstances, the invite could simply be a call of duty to address whatever situation demanding attention like the intervention of an emergency personnel in a fire, accident or incident.

We could probably become emotional wrecks, if we were to be so involved personally in the lives of everyone we meet. We would likely want to monitor their actions and words for our approvals or disapprovals. That alone can be a burden beyond measure. One that no human being can carry and still come out mentally sane.

If anyone struggles to accept another person as a person, it may simply be that one is mentally too close to the other, too involved in monitoring and assessing the ups and downs of the other. Even a parent-child relationship can go for the worst when either party is simply occupied toward the other beyond need without much regard to the cost to one’s mental and physical health. The same may go for a spousal relationship or a professional relationship.

Sometimes, it would probably serve us some good if we would step back a little from each other just so that our attention toward each other may be nothing more than what we would mutually see as a need.