"When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them." - Andy Warhol
Human nature instills us with concern for one another. While there is a huge lack of empathy in the world, there is also more of a presence of care between humans than there is an absence of it. But what happens when care and concern becomes toxic?
It isn't an enjoyable feat to see others in pain. Watching others neglect themselves or those around them, making reckless mistakes, is painstakingly awful.
Often times, we see it as our mission, consciously or unconsciously, to take these people under our wing and "fix" them. To put this in cliched terms: good intentions pave the road to hell, and you can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. When we try to save others, we lose ourselves in the process.
Being somebody's savior is a full time job, and nobody is qualified for the position. Wishing, praying, and pleading for someone's behavior to change and improve is a merry-go-round that never stops spinning with the same mistakes. In fact, this often enables the behavior. The individual will end up counting on you to help them pick up the pieces of themselves that they shatter with their poor choices every time.
The world is full of brokenness, and we are all broken from time to time. For some, this brokenness resonates in a self destructive way. People have to desire to improve before they can proceed to do so. While tough love is never easy, enabling someone and prolonging their brokenness is not the answer. Human beings are not quick fixes; people have to want to change in order for change to occur.
You can't save anyone; we all have to save ourselves.
