You can’t take care of everyone, so take care of yourself
As practitioners of life cultivation, we have many chances to encounter people in the following situation.
Everyone says that I am easy to get along with, and this personality has brought me many friends. However, after I turned forty, I became more and more powerless in the face of complicated interpersonal relationships. Every day after getting off work, I slumped on the bed and didn’t want to move. I couldn’t tell whether I was physically tired or mentally tired.
Are you in the same situation? What will you do? Are you going to continue to tire out yourself by being a good guy to everyone around you?
Come to think about it, when we first entered society, we didn’t have much experience. We were afraid of offending others, and we always tried our best to fulfill the requests of others.
But as we got older, we realized that wanting to please everyone is a vicious circle that we can never get out of, and it will only make us sink deeper and deeper.
There is a line in The Legend of Zhen Huan, a very popular Chinese drama, that is well said:
If you can’t take care of everyone, you should take care of yourself.
When we reach middle age, if it is too tiring to cater to others, then it is better to be considerate of ourselves and be a person who is not easy to get along with.
01 A firm refusal
As practitioners of life cultivation, we know a person who has the following experience.
He obviously didn’t want to agree to other people’s requests, but because of his status, he couldn’t say no to it. Sometimes he has already prepared a draft in his mind and he is ready to refuse, but it becomes “no problem” as soon as he opens his mouth.
Many people often prefer to embarrass themselves because of his status, but they also try their best to make others feel comfortable.
Just like the saying on the Internet:
The most tiring people in the world are those who don’t know how to say no.
We want to share another experience with you.
John was born in the slum in South Los Angeles. He was admitted to Stanford University because of his good grades. After more than ten years of struggle in the prestigious university and the big city of Los Angeles, John finally settled down in the city and started his own business.
The good news came back to his hometown, relatives kept coming to John for help.
“During the summer vacation, can you help your cousin to make up lessons?”
“Your nephew just graduated, can you help to arrange work for him?”
“My child is almost twenty five years old and hasn’t found a girlfriend yet. Can you introduce one to him?”
Some requests are beyond his capability, but in the face of the eager expectations of his relatives, he can’t say the word “no”.
What he didn’t expect was that when the community found that he could help, more and more relatives came to visit and asked for more and more favors. After several years of tossing around, John’s family was about to collapse.
Later, during a dinner party, he couldn’t help but lose his temper, saying that everyone should stop asking him for help in the future. Although the scene was very embarrassing at the time, John’s family has finally returned to a quiet life since then.
The ancients said:
When your strength is small, do not take on a heavy burden, When your words carry no weight, do not try to persuade others.
When we were young, we always felt that we had enough strength to hold an umbrella for others. We would rather suffer ourselves and want to help others.
However, once we reach middle age, time and energy are no longer as abundant as before. Then we should not force ourselves when others ask for help.
Whether it is a friend or a relative, helping is a kindness, not a duty.
If we are full of promises about other people’s affairs, if we overdraw ourselves and don’t talk about it, we may also arouse resentment from the other party.
After middle age, everyone has their own difficulties in life.
Only by resolutely refusing when it is time to refuse can we reduce unnecessary troubles and live our own life well.
02 Protect yourself
Some people say that middle-aged people are the best to be bullied, because they cannot stand to see the sufferings of the world, and they like to yell when they see injustice. They are kind to everyone, and they don’t like to do anything too extreme. Therefore, it is often the middle-aged people who are the most tired.
In the TV series Elite Lawyer, there is a segment that makes people extremely angry after watching it.
Through monitoring, Jack found out his nanny at home often abused his grandfather. Once, after he hurried home, he happened to witness the nanny slapping his grandfather on his face.
Jack decided to fire the nanny on the spot and thought of calling the police. But the nanny refused to leave, and begged Jack not to call the police. She begged that she was the only wage-earner in her family. If Jack reported the case, her whole family would be ruined, and her children would not be able to go to school.
The other party’s tearful begging instantly softened Jack’s heart. He couldn’t bear to drive the other party to a dead end, so he agreed not to report the crime.
The nanny continued to beg him to delete the surveillance video.
When Jack was hesitating, the nanny knelt down and began to threaten him with her death. She said that if she was seen by outsiders for committing such a crime, she would not be able to find another job in the future and she could only die.
Jack relented again and deleted the video in front of the nanny.
The nanny was satisfied now, and when she left, she kept muttering: “You are such a nice person.”
Unexpectedly, within a few days, Jack was detained by the police. It turned out that the nanny had visited a dentist to pull out two rotten teeth, but she lied that the teeth were knocked out by Jack. She even got a certificate of minor injury to prove her case, asking Jack to compensate her one million dollars.
As you can see, a good intention not only did not result in the other party’s repentance, but could bring disaster to ourselves. Such a result is really chilling.
There is a saying in a classic, Journey to the West:
It is rare to find people repaying kindness with kindness. It is common to find kindness being repaid by hatred.
Do you think that Jack’s experience is an exception? Have you seen or experienced situations where great kindness is turned into hatred?
Sometimes we forgive others for their mistakes, and the other person only sees us as weak and easily bullied. Sometimes we understand other people’s difficulties, but they think we are just being stupid.
As practitioners of life cultivation, when we reach middle age, we have experienced the fickleness of people and understood the complexity of human nature, so we gradually put away kindness.
Not everyone knows how to repay kindness and repay favors. The first prerequisite for kindness is to first protect ourselves.
03 Family comes first
Gu Long, a well-known author in Wuxia, once said:
The older you get, the more greedy you are for money, just because you have seen through everything and know that nothing in the world is more real than money.
Indeed, when we reach middle age, we basically become pragmatists. There are more and more places for us to spend money, so we have to care about money.
Qis Baishi was a very famous painter of art. After Qi Baishi became famous, he was also well known for his stinginess and ruthlessness.
In 1920, he made a rule:
Selling paintings regardless of friendship. A gentleman please pays according to painting work.
Later he added:
If you want to add insects and birds to flowers, add ten yuan each. If you want to add bees to wisterias, add twenty yuan each. Those who want to reduce the price will benefit themselves at the expense of others. I don’t like it.
In 1940, another rule was added:
No reduction in the price of paintings. No restaurants. No photography. The ruler paper is six yuan, and each square adds two cents. Selling paintings regardless of friendship, so gentlemen please respect themselves. Please pay according to the established price list. Don’t introduce anyone to get free paintings.
Because of these unkind rules, many people criticized Qi Baishi for being stingy. But how did they know Qi Baishi’s difficulties?
Qi Baishi’s youngest son once recalled his father and said:
He is very poor financially, and he also has to consider that in the future, he will have two families to support. Often relatives would come to see him in Beijing and take some money with them on leaving. The difficulties of these two families are on his shoulders alone, and his pressure is quite heavy.
It reminds us of that heart-wrenching and realistic saying:
People in the world are in a panic for a few taels of broken silver, but a few taels of broken silver can relieve all kinds of panic in the world. They will keep the elderly safe and healthy, and children in school.
After all, behind the seemingly stingy middle-aged people hide their difficulties and responsibilities. Once we enter middle-age, whether we financially succeed or not, we have become the supporter of everyone around us. Family expenses, children’s education, and parental support are our responsibilities for the rest of our lives.
As middle-aged people who live intelligently, we understand that no matter how important vanity is, it is not as important as the chores of daily life.
Our ability to support our family and live decently is the greatest dignity for middle-aged people.
04 Avoid an exhaustive life
As practitioners of life cultivation, we often attend various parties in order to integrate into the group. In the end, instead of gaining friendship and recognition, we often waste our energy in vain.
As we age past the middle aged, we eventually understand that the company of family members can make us feel more peaceful and at ease than the hustle and bustle in the crowd.
Some of us may look like a particularly out-of-group person in the eyes of others. We will not participate in social life after six in the evening, and no matter how busy we are on weekdays, we will go home for dinner. If we want to spend time with our children, we will refuse to participate in all unnecessary social interactions. For us, having an ordinary dinner with our family is far more important than drinking and socializing at dinner parties.
After passing the hurdle of middle age, the more mature people are, the less likely they are to be gregarious. Only by giving up those unimportant social activities can we spare a lot of energy to spend time with our family.
Walking halfway through life, we have already passed the age where we need to drink and socialize to prove that we are loyal and friendly. We will quit useless dinners and parties so that we can focus more on our home.
Once you are eighty years old, do you still want to be a very powerful person so much so that you would rather strip on a platform instead of reading a book at your home?
Once you are seventy six years old, do you still want to fight to be the most powerful person so much so that you may have a stroke and spend the rest of your life in bed?
We can bring real happiness to our family when we start to live a lonely life with our family. There is no end in money that you can make. There is no end to the power that you want to grab.
Learn to stop when the time comes.
05 So what
When people reach middle age, they will inevitably be bound by the world and always have too many scruples. But no matter what we do, there will always be people who don’t like us. Since everyone will offend others, it is better to put aside our worries and be a person who is not so easy to get along with.
Liu Tong wrote in his book:
There is no character in the world that can avoid offending people. Straight-talking will offend villains. Tactful-speaking will offend quick-tempered people. Good-natured people will offend principled-people. Tactful-people will offend smart-people.
As Yang Jiang said:
The world belongs to oneself and has nothing to do with others.
In the second half of our life, what do we want to do? Do we want to continue to be controlled by other people? Do we want to spend our energy making more money? Do we want to let powerful people control us for pitiful gain?
Or, should we follow our own heart and live our own life well?
You should ask yourself, what is the most important thing in the second half of the journey of your life?
End of post on to be a loner.
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