I've had a long history of being a busy body. Oh, it's been wrapped in lovely terms - caring, compassion, helping, love - all that crap. Yikes! "Love and caring" are crap?? Of course not - let me explain...
Even with the best intentions and sincere feeling, I've discovered about myself that spending time worrying and fussing, caring and helping, fixing and keeping the earth spinning keeps me from some very important work. When I feel exasperated, upset, emotionally drained, depressed, or like giving up on someone it's a very good clue that I need to take a good hard look at what I'm really doing. Judging someone, telling them what to do, setting them "straight" - whether wrapped in soft, sweet words, or said straight out - are all taking time from my own inner work. I've spent lots of time in my life taking on the burdons of others - bringing them into my "care" to help - sometimes feeling terribly let down at either their lack of appreciation or their flat our refusal to get their act together.
I'm learning that all of that is my problem - not theirs. I'm the one hiding under the mask of care giver and Earth Mother. The end result is blaming others for the state of the world. Wow! What a responsibility! Just who do I think I am that I get to design the perfect world for everyone?
The person posing the question felt that I was being rather selfish to say that when I'm busy worrying about someone else's problems, I'm really just distracting myself from my own issues. I tried to explain why I felt that there is a difference between true compassion, and the pretend caring of chasing after others faults to keep us from looking at our own. I couldn't really get my point across until I realized how simple it really should be.
When it doesn't feel like love, it isn't.
But even that really isn't simple, since we frequently get into such a pattern with that vicous cycle when worry (judgement/fixing/I-know-best/etc) is thought to be love. To me, the clue is when I'm doing the busy body thing, I'm giving away my personal energy and I wind up feeling drained and depressed. When I'm truly seeing with the eyes of compassion, and acting from that place, I feel at peace. True compassion, I've found, is like stepping into the light of "universal energy" and allowing that to flow - into me, and if needed, through me to the person who hasn't yet learned to step into that light.
I've also found that when I am worried about what others are doing wrong, chasing after them trying to help, or talking about that Black Sheep listing and confirming what they need to do or who they need to be, I'm hiding from myself - big time!
I've gotten over many of the hurdles of my childhood. Personal problems that took time and effort to work through - I'm very proud of my accomplishments. I'm getting over the habit of wanting to steal that feeling of self-satisfaction from someone else.
Afterall, I did the work on myself and even though I made loads of mistakes, I really can't say I would change anything. All that I've gone through have made me who I am today - all of these lessons were things I had to work through on my own. The most helpful folks along the way were those who really listened to me - they didn't tell me what to do (which is nearly always a disaster!), they didn't agree or disagree with me, they simply listened. The helped me find my own best answer.
Maybe one of the lessons is to remember to be proud of myself. I don't need to fix someone else and take credit from them. Sometimes that is hard to remember - sometimes the vessel can get so dry that the water is absorbed so fast and given away so fast it never refills. Taking all the time I need to refill the vessel is a real priority - not the time it "should" take - the time is does take.
