I once read a very short story.
It said that when you see a puppy hit by a car, you want to grab it. Hold it.
You try to heal it
馃挜Most likely, that puppy will bite us. Not because it's bad. But because he's afraid we'll touch his wound.
And you get angry. You feel ungrateful. You reproach yourself for having had good intentions.
You wonder why you got involved where no one called you.
You feel stupid. And you end up justifying the bite
馃挜Many times, I was that little puppy.
And I still jump every time I see someone wants to come and touch me right, where I got hit.
It's a defense mechanism. Survival, almost.
And many others, I was that well-meaning busybody, wanting to lift someone else's pain without anyone asking me for that favor.
馃挜I know what it feels like to be bitten.
Of course I do.
My hands are marked with teeth that are not mine.
But one thing I understood a while back:
You can't ask the puppy for conscience.
You can't harass him to ask for forgiveness.
You can't ask him to value our gesture.
Nothing can be asked of anyone as long as that someone is bleeding.
Let it go.
It is necessary to let it fester.
Leave him space to wake up after such a blow and to decide, by himself, what measures to take.
馃挜Sometimes letting him choose how, with whom, when and in what way he is going to recover, is the hardest way to learn to love others. Because it all involves leaving.
Letting him grow up.
Letting him free.
Running the risk that he will not choose you to accompany him in his process.
That he does not call you.
That he prefers to lick his wounds elsewhere.
Or even, and what is worse, that he decides in full awareness, not to want to heal.
It is difficult.
But when one perceives which of the two is the adult in the relationship, one has to make that decision.
Sometimes letting go of the other is the only way to allow them to find themselves. And to bet that this encounter will make him wake up.
That is also to love.
And loving well.
Very well.
