Work To Change

I have discovered something none to radical, it does not pay to be kind, it does not pay to be generous and it does not pay to be loving. When you’re dealing with folk who’ve made predatory selfishness their mantra, the biggest mistake you can make is to wear your heart on your sleeve, it does no one least of all you, any good. So I’ve changed, I observe the selfish and the self-serving more calmly than I once did and with a much sharper sense of humour.

I look on with disbelief as they dynamite their lives, demanding my help in as aggressively manipulative a manner as they have learned to adopt. I look on and proffer the help they will surely need from an emotional distance, because if they haven’t changed their mindset, manner or approach in forty years they are not going to change now.

I proffer that help knowing full well that at the very first advantageous and profitable opportunity they will cut my throat (figuratively speaking), and then expect me to take the blame for them having done so. Not only that I know that as they blame me for having helped them to my injury, they will be backed up and supported by other relatives who will chime in with their agreement at the opportune time.

Even so my attitudes have changed, my outlook has changed, so the help will be given but it won’t alter my sense of humour or my course through life or my outcomes. Having embraced change, their lack of it has ceased to significantly impact me.