– Elizabeth Gilbert
When I was a girl, I had a friend who lived nearby who loved to play house and was pretty forceful about getting her way. She was forever reenacting her parents’ stormy fights, and she always wanted me to play the father while she played the mother. Inevitably, she would end up shrieking at me about all the ways I disappointed her and didn’t really love her. She would threaten to leave me and take the children, and tell me I was going to regret my choices and end up miserable and alone for not loving her the way she needed to be loved. She would grab the dolls playing the parts of the children and storm off, and only if I begged her for her forgiveness and pledged my undying love would she relent. We would then make up and be a happy family for a couple of minutes – until she found or made up some new reason to be angry. Amazingly, she never seemed to tire of playing this game. I sometimes meet people who remind me of her: people who are playing out emotional issues from the past by stirring up new dramas, who are endlessly angry and starved for more love than we can ever give them because they’re trying to fill a hole in their hearts left by someone now long gone. Whenever someone like this tries to drag me into some dramatic game, I stop and remind myself that I don’t have to play with this person just because they want me to. The world is full of wonderful people who want the same love, peace, pleasure and happiness we desire; if we’re wise, we’ll remember that we get to choose which people we allow into our hearts and lives.