Just when you think you have grown wise and calm and gained equanimity, something occurs, or someone occurs, and you are beside yourself with annoyance and despair at ever finding and keeping the evenness and peace and maturity within you.

You ask yourself why someone’s irrationality should affect you at all, and, yet, here you are, affected. Before this response to your affability, you thought you were the cat’s meow of goodness and far beyond feelings of resentment. You thought you had arrived by now.

You went out of your way for several people, and now they want more discussion from you, as if you hadn’t been generous, as if they hadn’t heard what you were saying and grasped that it was from the goodness of your heart that you responded at all. They seem to think that you have the time to coddle them, as if you have the time they apparently do to play around and waste. You were gracious – you really were – and now you feel that you are being walked over. Certainly, your generosity was not valued, and you remind yourself that you are not everyone’s mother and don’t owe what everybody and his brother seem to ask of you, which you really ask of yourself.

You have long learned that there is no point in having the last word. No matter how right you are, you realize that you already wasted your time and you will not waste more time. Of course, you do waste more time as you fume about the people you are interacting with. You do think that you gave too much, that you made yourself too vulnerable, and you wonder why you fall into that trap time after time. You ask yourself why you insist on playing the role of Sir or Lady Bountiful.

It sinks into you that you have other priorities, yet you make people and their feelings a priority, and now you feel the fool. You ask yourself about your excessive need to be kind and giving. You come to realize that no one makes a fool of you - that you yourself do it, not the others.

You are ready to face the fact that you are needy, and it is you who puts the value on yourself and, as you see it, you let other people walk all over you. There is truth in this. It is good to give and give, and yet you cannot keep giving where your giving is not valued.

One thing you have to realize is that not everyone else cares about other people’s feelings as much as you do. You may be sure I don’t ask you to be ruthless, but what you may see as ruthless isn’t ruthless at all. The people who are not as solicitous as you, they aren’t being ruthless either. They do not see beyond what they see. Being sensitive is not high on their list. Perhaps getting their own way is high on their list, which, as a matter of fact, is also high on your list! You see yourself more as not being understood. This is also true. The others may see that they are not making inroads on what they want of you.

All these are words, of course. It all comes down to what you want. If you didn’t want appreciation from others after you go to great lengths, why would you mind so much when they seem to take you for granted. Look, you can serve others without over-serving. And sometimes the greatest service is to not give so much as you do when you expect an award, even if the reward is: “Oh, thank you.”

Instead they ask you to give more obeisance to them as if, because you gave once, you are supposed to continue to give. When this is the case, as it seems to be, then you drop the whole thing, say nothing, or send a form response. If you over-extend, don’t over-extend any more. You don’t have to. You may see absence of response as burning bridges behind you when it’s really no more than leaving the scene of an accident. If you don’t want to get involved further, you don’t have to. Not explaining further to someone isn’t the same as burning your bridges behind you. If you tell someone off, that is burning your bridges behind you.

And, yes, you are growing. Of course, you are growing. You’re just not all the way there yet. You are growing in the right direction. Be as good to yourself as you are to everyone else. You deserve kindness. You are as equal in worth as everyone else, as anyone else. Hear Me.