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Relationships bid for attention. A request demands a reaction: either share or dismiss.
Some people become vampiric, needing you to sustain them. (And vice versa.)
Your responsibility is your life, not theirs. Do not give improperly until you become resentful; do not be hurtful.
Acknowledge that both people are individuals with boundaries, and then you can enjoy the generosity of kindness for the gift it is, rather than a compelled demand.
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We tend to think if you remove a piece of your life it can be replaced with a new, more thoughtfully chosen priority.
But controlling life as a puzzle is a nightmare: pieces shrink, expand, and multiply when you are not looking.
We cannot trade portions of life. Life is rhizomatic and flowing: to remain living it needs boundaries and weeding, not rigidity.
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A commonality of Amazon, Google, and Facebook is that they began not as defensive structures but as open structures.
The challenge is to remain at the top: fending off all comers consumes too many resources and promotes closed-system paranoia. Instead, create an open platform providing potential for everyone (even if serving them also harms them). Users will cling to the meager benefits, become advocates, and protect your platform for you.
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There is a fine line between self-acceptance and communal spirit.Self-acceptance means keeping your responsibilities separate from others to be genuinely who and what you are. Having confidence in yourself allows you to have confidence in others, prompting community spirit with your comrades.
However, it is easy for self-acceptance to revert to social acceptance. Make sure your community action affirms the "I" rather than giving it away.
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How do you balance strength and confidence with kindness and empathy? To be sensitive and rational tends towards acquiescent compliance: a non-heroic trait. To give up sensitivity and rationality is to become brutish.
You only find the confidence by considerately tending to your beliefs and boundaries. You achieve heroism not by hiding behind boundaries, but by loving across them.
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You have a limited amount of attention, patience, willpower… caring. Once it is gone you run on negative, becoming "not you."
Beyond empty this "not you" is easily distracted, swayed, overwhelmed… primed for temptation and eventual regret.
