Do You Feel Responsible
for Other People’s Happiness?

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This past July, Joyce and I were sitting on a sandy beach of the Klamath River with a group of participants during the first morning meditation of our annual white water adventure. Joyce asked each of us to reflect on what we most wanted from the five-day trip. Even though we are the leaders/facilitators, it is still important to both of us to fully and vulnerably participate. When it was my turn to share, I told the group how it gives me great joy to share the river with others, to witness each person as they open their heart and quiet their mind amidst the surrounding beauty, and find their own joy in this amazing natural playground. Then I humbled myself and revealed the other side of this process, the part of me that gets caught in feeling responsible for other people’s happiness. I admitted to an unconscious attitude that it’s especially up to me for people to enjoy themselves. Charley Thweatt, at our summer renewal retreat at Breitenbush Hot Springs, sometimes sings the following line when the children are present, “Who decides if I have a good time?” Then everyone loudly sings, “I do, I do.” In my heart I understand this quite well, but there remains an unconscious part of my soul that still occasionally sings, “Who decides if you have a good time? I do, I do!”

     When I get trapped into this alternate song, I get myself into trouble. When I feel overly responsible for other people’s happiness, I try too hard. For example, I know I can be funny when I let the humor come naturally. When the over-responsible part of me kicks in, I try too hard to be extra entertaining, and as a result I’m not very funny (or so my children tell me). Do you know anyone like this?

     Many years ago, one of our first spiritual mentors, Leo Buscaglia, told me to stop doing a “soft shoe” dance (i.e., trying extra hard) to get people to like me. He then seriously said, “Barry, relax, you’re very likeable just the way you are. When you try to prove it, you become obnoxious.” Those words really hit home.

     As a middle child growing up in a noisy family, I was seen if I moved faster than everyone else. I was heard if I made more noise than everyone else. I was noticed when I forced myself to get noticed. Maybe some of you reading this can relate.

     But there’s a deeper aspect to my “over-responsible” syndrome, and this allows me to be even more humble. In a mostly hidden part of my soul I carry a message that I don’t deserve love unless I give love. Even though I know better than this when I’m aware and conscious, there are many times I’m not aware and conscious. At those times, my worth is measured by how much good I do, or for how much happiness I bring to others. So then I try too hard to make people happy, or I don’t give myself enough quiet, quality time. I forget that I am loved and loveable for who I am, that I’m a human being, not a human doing. I forget that I am immersed in an ocean of love. I am not separate from that ocean. I forget that I have a divine inheritance, and I don’t ever have to earn the right to love.

     Our greatest responsibility is to feel love, which is to know our true selves, and to be genuinely at peace in this world. It is from this inner abundance that we naturally give to others. There is no breathing out unless we first breathe in. As the flight attendants always admonish, if we do not first place the oxygen mask onto our own face, there can be no helping anyone else with theirs. We deserve to feel the infinite wealth of love that is the core of our being.

     Sometime in the middle of the river trip, we were floating through a quiet stretch of water when Jack, a middle-aged man in another raft, called out to me in a loud voice, “Hey Barry, look. I’m having such a fabulous time right now and you’re not doing anything.” Everyone laughed at our group’s inside joke as I smiled and relaxed a little more inside, let this truth once again sink in, and then I resumed my peaceful reverie while rowing my boat gently down the stream.

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Joyce and Barry Vissell, a nurse and medical doctor couple since 1964, are the authors of The Shared Heart, Models of Love, Risk To Be Healed, The Heart’s Wisdom and Meant To Be. Call 800-766-0629 (locally 831-684-2299) or write to the Shared Heart Foundation, P.O. Box 2140, Aptos, CA 95001, for free newsletter, further information on counseling sessions by phone or in person, their books, tapes and training programs, or their schedule of talks and workshops. Visit www.sharedheart.org for their July 16-21 White Water Adventure in Northern California; July 23-28 Breitenbush Hot Springs Summer Renewal in Oregon; and Feb 4-11, 2007 Hawaii “Couples in Paradise” Retreat.

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