In the end, you can’t really force someone to do anything, even if it’s for their good.
You can’t force someone to respect your feelings or care about your passions or believe your dreams.
You can’t force someone to believe your side of the story, even when you’re right.
You can’t force an apology.
You can’t force someone to engage in social justice or fight for the poor or to become nuanced in culture and history.
You can’t force growth.
You can’t force someone to show up on time, or even show up at all.
In the end, I’ve learned that people will do whatever they want, even if that means stepping on you or neglecting you or abandoning you or belittling you or choosing others over you. I’ve probably done this as much as it’s been done to me. It’s a terrible cycle that leaves us bitter, suspicious, paranoid, and completely jaded.
I’ve also learned that I don’t care if you don’t care. I have to love anyway. I have to be patient anyway. I have to be jaded to being jaded. Because I don’t want to perpetuate someone else’s cycle of apathy and neglect. I don’t want to be one more rung in the ladder of indifference. I don’t want to be a reactionary pawn.
No, I cannot force anything on you, and I won’t. I can only pour out what I have. Even if you don’t care. Especially if you don’t care. I’ll pour out anyway. In the end, our lives will have been given over to dust. I’d rather mine will have been given over to you.
— J.S.
J.S. Park: Hospital Chaplain 
Thanks for sharing this. It’s been a hard lesson that I’ve been learning lately. I’ve had to learn to examine myself and try to change my heart just to deal with people I find difficult that won’t change. It’s much more freeing, rather than getting frustrated and waiting in vain for the other person to change.. The funny thing is, the more I act like I love them, the more I really do, no matter how they behave towards me.
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I wrote something similar on this about people too:
https://jsparkblog.com/2015/02/26/people-are-people-and-some-days-will-drive-you-absolutely-insane/
And right on. You reminded me of a quote by C.S. Lewis —
“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”
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I really love your straight forward honesty. It is so refreshing!
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Thank you, dear friend!
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thank you for this sharing.
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This is actually quite beautiful. I felt my eyes swell up and just begin to cry. cry. I felt when you released this blog, you were talking to me because I was just going through a very ugly betrayal. You are right when you love, you become free. Just free from the ugly imprisonment of what we call bitterness and hate
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As you share your heart touching experience, you have touched many. I think you are not as jaded as you profess. Acting in love and not in revenge, bitterness, and hate, is not what I would expect from a jaded person. I take issue with this statement: “In the end our lives will be given over to dust.” By experience we know that our bodies will be given over to dust, by faith I believe our souls will live in eternity. But our lives? Our lives will influence to future generations in some form – teaching, writing, loving, hating, temper, patience. For instance it could be possible that you are no longer living. If you are not you are having an influence on me and other readers today and we would not even know! Your life is indeed worth living, learning, and loving so that others might also live, learn and love. I am ever so thankful for lives that have gone before me to help make me what I am!
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Reblogged this on and commented:
This how i think at all.
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