Dear Rabbi Gruen, thank you for your weekly shiurim — they’re really inspiring. I’d like to ask a question if that’s okay.
Baruch Hashem I’m a kallah, and at the engagement celebration, one of my grandmothers told everyone present that she was going to give me a certain very special and expensive gift. When the next Yom Tov came around, however, my chassan’s grandmother sent us that exact same gift — what’s more, it was engraved with our names. Knowing my grandmother, she’s going to take it very personally if she finds out, and she’ll be so upset. Can you please advise me what to do?
Thank you
ANSWER
This question obviously comes from a good place in the person’s heart. Of course we should all feel upset at other people’s distress and want to make others happy. At the same time, it isn’t always possible to achieve that, so what then? Before we address this specific situation, I would like to address the attitude that brings it about.
It’s important to distinguish between feeling bad at another person’s troubles, and feeling responsible for solving them. Feeling responsible for another person’s feelings, or obligated to resolve their difficulties, is sometimes overdone to a point where it becomes what’s known as codependency, and can lead to additional problems. People generally have more than enough to worry about in their own lives without taking on worries about other people too. Codependency is extremely stressful, especially as solving someone else’s problems is often so hard to do, and particularly if you’re intent on not just solving their individual problems but actually fixing them.
The truth is that it’s impossible to fix another person. You often can’t directly change another person’s feelings, and being that it’s our feelings that make situations problematic or not, our efforts to change another person will very often fail. What’s more, our efforts will also make it harder for that other person to fix himself, because he has become accustomed to the idea that “someone else” will take care of the problem for him.
In short, codependency doesn’t do anyone any favors.
As a side note, when people are only trying to do whatever they can to protect others from encountering difficulties or distress, it’s worthwhile to remember that not only might you not be responsible for protecting them (or able to do so), but also that maybe, the distressing event was actually meant to happen, and is good for the person.