Originally Posted by Angela  It looks to me like your desire is not to help them so much as to fix them.
Why do you think they need your help? Because you had problems, you successfully surmounted those problems, and you think you recognize the same problems in your parents lives.
Being attached to helping an adult who doesn't express a desire for help is not helping. It's a complete lack of trust.
Like you, each of us experiences our own challenges in life, and we learn how to expand into who we really are by owning our own choices. When you're attached to helping, you are actually interfering in that process. If your parents were to say to you, "Look, we can see that you are glowing with self-esteem and vitality. How do you do that, cuz we'd like to have that for ourselves." Then what you have to offer would be help. But if they are living their lives, even if you don't approve of their choices and even if it looks to you like they're not as happy as you think they could be, your attachment to your desire to help is intrusive and wrong-making.
By starting a thread here you invited people to give you their feedback on your circumstance. No one here has any emotional charge in whether or not you heed or even listen to what we have to say. If someone were to suddenly get upset or angry or hurt about your not taking their advice, you'd know it's all about them and nothing about you, right? And if, instead of having invited feedback, I just walked up to you cold and said, "You are failing at something that I have suffered from and successfully overcome. I'm going to show you how to stop all this failure and fulfill your potential as a human being." Well, I think you would probably be affronted. It's not my job to judge what you are failing at or what you should focus on in your personal growth. One path is the desire to make a difference in people's lives with no attachment, and the other path is intervention and projection.
Another example might be if I see a woman struggling in a wheelchair and I get attached to "helping" her get where she wants to go. It's very likely that it's her struggle itself that is really helping her. For me to decide she needs my help would be contrary to what she's actually commited to: e.g., building strength, fortitude, and self-reliance. Although I might say, "can you use some assistance?" She might ask me to buy her a banana, or to give her a little push, or leave her alone. It would be insulting for me to insist that she needs my help, and what form that help should take.
In that way, your next right action in a commitment to making a difference might be to ask your parents if they would like your help with anything in their lives. Ask them what they are focusing on in their growth or otherwise that you might be assistance in. If you really want to make a difference, be available to listen to them rather than confronting them. It's possible that you might be able to demonstrate what you're concerned about, and it's also possible that your help will consist of something you've never even thought of.
As others have said here, one possible way for you to make a difference without attachment is to live your life in such a way that you are a living, breathing embodiment of inspiration. (as opposed to an interventionist wrong-maker.) In that case, your help may consist of simply being present to your parents as your new inspiring way of being. You might never even have to have this "confrontation" you desire; simply Being inspiration and freedom is often more than enough. |