EVERYONE KNOWS BEST

It seems everyone has an opinion on the way I need to handle things in my life. "Just reach out to your parents again." they say. "You and Parker have a great relationship." "Maybe you guys just need a hobby." Not everything is that easy or that cut and dried. It is often so much easier to say than to actually do. The exterior view is not always as clear as the interior view. In almost every life there are skeletons in a closet. For example, the battered spouse tries hard not to expose those wounds for the rest of the world to see. And so it is with all of us. No matter how open we are about our lives, there's almost always an element we try to hide. We live a grand façade. We fear the rejection, the mumbling behind our backs and the vulnerability that may come about by our being completely honest with the people in and around our lives.

I suppose I should be grateful that people care enough about my happiness to express their thoughts and concerns, but there are times when the "sound" advice crosses a line, especially when the advice is unsolicited. It's one thing to ask for one's opinion, and quite another to be on the hot seat, so to speak, being told that you should do this or that, when a solution wasn't even being sought.

The things that are going on in my relationship are not things easily remedied by talking to one another, finding a hobby, finding different ways of connecting. They go far deeper than that. Things with my parents aren't as easily resolved by writing a letter, or reaching out in some other way that hasn't been tried before. Most of these issues have been compounded over the years. The Berlin Wall wasn't built in a day and its destruction didn't come about in a day, either. So it is with these relationship issues in my life. The "walls" have taken a period of time to be built up. And, if there is to be resolution, or breaking down, as it were, it will take time as well.

Here's my confession: I am grateful for the people in my life who show care and concern for me. However, sometimes it is hard when those who don’t know the whole story are the first to offer advice. It’s frustrating when you’ve done so much work on your own and some people negate your progress by saying “oh, you’ve been working on this or that? I hadn’t noticed.” Sometimes, it seems that people are more willing to point out the splinter in my eye while ignoring the plank in their own eye. Maybe that’s just human nature. At any rate, I’m going to just keep my chin up and realize that one day, all my problems are going to meet their solutions. It may not be today and it may not be tomorrow, but it will happen. Everyone has opinion. We just have to learn when to keep ours to ourselves and when they are welcomed by someone else.