We had dinner this evening with dear friends, older friends. They've moved back to the Seattle area and we don't see them nearly as much. A significant recovery moment happened several years ago with this couple.
They are in their early 70's, so roughly twenty years ahead of us in life experience and years. We have a lot in common and what could be significant differences. We all decided years ago the differences weren't worth keeping us from knowing each other. I'm grateful for the belief that it's a much less rich life to have only people around you that hold identical beliefs on all topics.
We both were in a small spiritual community for several years that meet twice monthly. They were the elder statespeople if you will, often quietly weighing in on topics they had a unique vantage on. This group morphed and changed over several years time, some of which they saw and experienced.
About five years ago, a couple and single person in the group who had been friends since high school, essentially ended their friendship quite dramatically. The couple left our group. As a One, PTSD-sufferer and all-around codependent, I felt immediately compelled to try and fix things.
We let it all shake out for about a few months and then I'd had enough. I asked our friends, the older couple, to have lunch with the intended topic of conversation: What are we going to do to fix this?
As we worked our way through lunch, I finally brought up the subject. What's your plan, wise older friends? What should we do? Should we coordinate what we're going to do to fix this?
They sat their calmly chewing their food, pondering my urgent questions. Well, they said, we don't really plan to do anything.
I tried to remain calm, but felt shocked, betrayed. If anyone could shed some light on resolving this, it'd be them. No, they said, this isn't really our business. It's their business, the three of them, and they aren't asking for our input. It's sad, it really is. It breaks our heart, but no, we're not going to get involved.
I was stunned. It had never crossed my mind that I shouldn't do something active to try and resolve this clearly awful and devastating relational event. It dramatically changed our community and they were all obviously angry but also suffering. There had to be a way for them to reconcile.
It turned out, our friends were right. I probably mark this as one of the first milestones in my turning toward at least considering that I was overreacting and interpreting life in very unhealthy ways. (Probably the other one was in recovery when I heard the saying "Respect people enough to let them life their own life, their entire life.")
I felt responsible for everyone and everything. I was codependent with the world. I didn't understand that not only did alot of people around me have unhealthy boundaries, I didn't either. Not with myself, not with other people.
That was five years ago and it turns out, those three people never spoke again. Their friendship ended, permanently. My part of the journey, instead of trying to fix it, has been to learn to maintain relationships with people that don't speak with each other. I had to learn significantly deeper, more mature skills on not judging, not taking sides, but also being myself and not allowing myself to feel pressured or take sides (something none of them asked me to do).
How fortunate to have people in my community and life who've enriched my understanding of the world, helped me see my own faults without shaming me and model deep, mature living. That doesn't sound particularly sexy, but really it's everything.