That's an enormous distinction that has taken me years to figure out. I have lived my life, wanting others to be happy, doing for them, trying, expending energy to make them happy. To no avail. And, to my detriment.
What I've learned is...you can't make any one happy. They have to choose it for themselves. Easy to say, hard to do sometimes. The most important thing is to understand that not only is it impossible to make someone else happy, but it is not your responsibility either. They must choose for themselves.
It's very hard to sit and watch somone else close to you actually choose to be unhappy. I have people right now, not my husband, who are choosing, unconsciously or otherwise, to be unhappy, feeling victimized. It has caused me pain. Now I see that it's the best that people like this can do and I have compassion for them. In some way, it serves them to be unhappy. Whether they define themselves as the victim and enjoy the attention and perceived sympathy, which they mistake for love, or whether they like being unhappy because of the drama and attention, or whether they choose to be unhappy and complain because it keeps them from seeing possibilities and living life fully, staying in their confined comfort zone which makes them feel safe, or finally, whether they feel unloveable, unworthy of love, and believe that unhappiness is their destiny, I have no idea. So, I just stand by. And, love.
A friend wrote to me the other day and told me that she wasn't feeling well, that she had a cold, that her father had been staying with her, and that it made her sad that all he did was talk about how badly he felt. Here's what I wrote to her: "Here's my guess about your dad. He's feeling lonely and wants to be loved. The best way he can find to feel that love is to make people feel sorry for him because he doesn't feel well. so he chooses to complain about how he feels to engender the feelings of sympathy, which he mistakes for love. Try to find a way to love him without feeling sucked into feeling guilty or sad or sympathetic, without being sucked into his pain. You can love him, on your terms, generously and unconditionally. "
All I can do is love such people, an act which which seems difficult to do sometimes. But, then I remember what my dear friend Kelly says: "Everything is either an expression of love or a cry for love." I see choosing to be unhappy as a desparate cry out for love. So, I just love. Really love. Provide unconditional love, seeing them as loveable, and holding a space for them to walk into that love, whenever they are ready to accept it for themselves. Love is all around them. They just can't see it.
Do you know you are loved? I mean, really loved. Unconditionally loved? If not, you might want to watch this movie, called Do You Know?
Click here to watch: http://www.bettertobless.com/movie3.html
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