I used to think being responsible meant taking ownership. Like, if I was a responsible parent or leader or spouse, then I would take ownership of an issue and make sure things got done according to my agenda and my belief in what was best. Recently I realized that I have been confusing loving another soul with being “responsible” for him, and behaving as though I had “ownership” of his experience. Here’s the story…
I am deeply in love with my husband, who has been suffering from a few physical ailments for a period of time, now. He is more “westernized” in his preferences for medicine and healing than I am. (He says I believe in all that woo woo stuff. Only he uses a different word for “stuff.”) Anyway, as I have been watching him struggle in pain every day, I have confused the way I love him with feeling a sense of responsibility for him. So I have been pressuring him: Why don’t you try this? How about if we call this person and ask for that? Why do you insist on doing it only the western way? What have you got to lose by trying something different, even if it feels a little bit like woo woo? Why don’t you read this article? How about if we attend this webinar? Did you see that commercial on TV? What do you think about that drug? Did you hear about that alternative approach? Maybe we should eat more of this and less of that? What should we do first? And right after that?
My deeply rooted desire to help probably feels like relentless nagging to him. I have gotten frustrated with his lack of interest in the options that I believed could help him. I have wanted to take responsibility (actually, ownership) for his experience and his healing. And frankly, he is too stubborn to give up his ownership of his experience, his health, his body. Good for him!
I am just now realizing (or maybe re-learning) that responsibility means “I have the ability to choose my response” to his experience. That makes responsibility completely different from ownership. I cannot take ownership of his experience, his decisions, his pain, his life. All I can do is very lovingly, very tenderly, very intentionally enter into a shared experience with him where I carefully choose my responses. That means my responses aren’t about what I WANT. (And frankly, what I have wanted is more like ownership.) Instead, what I HAVE is completely different. It is not ownership. It is simply (and ONLY) my choice, moment by moment, day by day, to decide how I will respond to him and his experience.
I cannot want a healing method for him more than he wants it for himself. I cannot want a life experience for him more than he wants it for himself. And really, I am in no position to decide what is right for him. That would be ownership. And that is not the nature of the loving relationship we have chosen for ourselves and each other. Instead, if I live into the vows I made the day I married him, I will honor him and trust him and value him. I will step aside from my own desires, no matter how deeply rooted in love they may be. And I will show up for him the way he needs me to show up for him. That means I relinquish ownership of his experience. And I choose instead to RESPOND in love, only. I get out of the way. I allow him to lead his own experience. I stop suggesting which path to take, how to take it, when to take it, why he should take it. And I let him lead his way on his journey. I trust his belief, knowledge and intuition about his experience. I close my mouth and open my heart. I take his hand, and acknowledge that he has ownership of this. And then I choose my response to that truth. In this case, it means I love him enough to let go of everything else.
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