#AtoZChallenge Lessons Learned At 30: "Change Nobody"

Bad habits, ill company, way of thinking, cheap attitude, shortage of manners, poor etiquette ... I learned (the hard way!) that I cannot change anybody. And believe me there are pressures demanding that I change people for the better either to settle for a compromise in my relationship with them or to change them for their own good! I am not the Belle who can learn to love a Beast and I am not a prophet who would change the fate of nations. Changing people is something I have always found impossible. It twists and contorts me in uncomfortable ways and I end up trying to change myself rather than the brick wall I am hitting my head against.

YOU CANNOT CHANGE MINDSETSIf someone reads the menu from the prices side and orders the most expensive entree when the bill’s on you, you cannot change them. If someone is as tolerant of others and as reasonable as the current President of the United States, I cannot make them see through a different lens. If someone thinks educated and working women are fierce feminists and cannot build simple homes and families, I cannot defeat that egoistic idea. If someone does not understand the idea of pure love I cannot stuff Disneyland in their tiny minds. If someone does not believe in miracles I cannot split the sea into two and prove it to them.

YOU CANNOT CHANGE THEIR HABITSIf someone is committed to lung cancer and smokes like an exhaust pipe of a sulphur factory - I cannot change them. I cannot be the dying heroine from A Walk To Remember who can steer the life of a reckless idiot towards academic pursuits. I cannot turn the fate around for anyone who loves driving off cliffs (metaphor!) or putting their head in the snake pit (again, metaphor!)'

YOU CANNOT CHANGE THEM TO BE YOUNobody is you. I learned this the hardest way! Not everybody can deliver the same like you do: in loyalty, in sincerity, in love, and in kindness. And you cannot make them be that just by continuing to be that way towards them. It would be a waste of emotional investment and you get badly hurt in the end.