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The older I get, the more I come to appreciate those who just live and let live. So much of the tension that exists in any of my relationships—from romantic to platonic to familial—stems from the fact that somebody won’t let someone else just be. I’ll admit that sometimes, that someone is me. I can, at times, get too involved in the lives of my loved ones. I can overstep my bounds. I can stick my nose where it doesn’t belong. If I feel that someone I love is making a mistake, or at least not doing things in the best way possible, it’s hard for me not to want to step in. But, people don’t always want my assistance, and offering it—unsolicited—can just lead to fights.
It’s funny that I have struggled to learn when to lay off because I, personally, have been on the other side of unwanted opinions and I know how much it bothers me. There have been several long stretches of time when I didn’t speak to a friend or family member because I just got so tired of them trying to control my life. But, being young, I was self-centered often, and only thought about how others’ actions bothered me, without realizing that sometimes I was guilty of the same thing.
Today, I really respect those who have mastered the art of live and let live. It makes for a pretty peaceful existence. I understand that, in some cases, you have to step in—you have to push things to go a certain way. We can’t have a totally hands-off approach to the behaviors of others because they can affect us sometimes. But I’ll also say that we often try to interfere too much in things that, ultimately, aren’t our problem or our business. Here’s what it really means to live and let live.
Let people learn from their mistakes
There is almost no more impactful way to learn an important lesson than through a mistake. You can try to warn someone that if they take action X, result Y will happen. But, they will probably always toy with the idea of trying action X until they learn the hard way—through experience—that it’s a bad idea. There’s something about the sting of a mistake that sticks with us, and stops us from repeating that mistake.
