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Bringing Change

N and I are working really hard to get our common friend B to start taking care of her physical and mental health which have both been suffering for the last few years. B is as stubborn as they get and refuses to listen to us even though she knows we care for her deeply and want nothing but the best. It is not enough to trigger the change that is needed and at our age, people do get set in their ways. If roles were reversed and two of my close friends saw a problem in my situation that I was oblivious to, not sure how much they would have been able to influence my thinking. Reading this Kakfa quote put into words our struggles with B

One has either to take people as they are, or leave them as they are. One cannot change them, one can merely disturb their balance. A human being, after all, is not made up of single pieces, from which a single piece can be taken out and replaced by something else. Rather he is a whole, and if you pull one end, the other, whether you like it or not, begins to twitch

We are proposing to change B and deeply disturbing her balance so it is no surprise that she is resisting so hard. We are tryin to impact one small piece of her - ignoring what is driving that piece to behave the way it does. We have no idea when the desired change happens how it will impact the equilibrium of the remaining pieces that make up B. What the resulting twitch will entail for her. The words made me pause and thinking about our well-intentioned efforts and I am far from certain this will serve B well. Our best hope is she will find a way to rebalance the pieces on her own, in her own way.

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