Monday, September 24, 2007

Freedom

... Letting someone "off the hook" on a promise or commitment made to you may look like it will hurt you in the short run, but it will never damage you in the long run, because when you give the other person their freedom, you give yourself freedom as well. And so now you are free of the agonies and sorrows, the attacks on your dignity and your self-worth that inevitably follow when you force another person to keep a promise to you that he or she does not want to keep. The longer damage will far outweigh the shorter-- as nearly everyone who has tried to hold another person to their word has discovered.

~From "Conversations With God."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

wise words ...

I've been struggling lately with the violation of a promise, and the betrayal of the words "I love you," ... This helps to remind me to let it go for my own sake.

Thank you ... freedom is mine to claim ... I'm a better person for it !!

AMGallegos said...

Once I tried exactly what the author (God?)writes here. It took a lot, but the sense of immediate relief was beautiful. Now, after more than a decade, I am having second thoughts...I may have sold myself short.