When You've Done Your Best

We so often try and try in life.  We bang our head against the walls of our own and others resistance. We want to help, or think we're helping or saving someone. But there comes a time when you truly have done your best and must accept this and move on. 

In early University at Queen's in Kingston, I was living with my first housemates. Six of us went from our parents homes, to dorms and to a house all within a year's times. That in itself is a big adjustment. We all brought our values and ideas to the place, but of course it was all unconscious - so the divisions began and got worse. By the time four months had gone by, there were rules about the fridges, and people sharing groceries but only with so and so, and TV squabbles - on and on it went. I was feeling very alienated since it was me who brought the gang together, found the house, cleaned it and brought all my basement furniture and kitchen supplies from home.

I was so torn about what to do I turned to my professor - a true spiritual teacher - and said, "Sir, how do  you know when you should go back in and try harder and when you've done enough?  He sort of stopped in his tracks and said, " If you have given it your very best and you're still not happy, by all means get out "  It was the affirmation and perhaps permission I needed to let go of the situation. I told my own parents of my plan and made very quiet phone calls to other apartments. I was so scared they would all find out and come down on me even worse. It go so bad at one point that my former close room mate was angry at me over something petty and decided to invite my ex boyfriend over and kicked me out of my own place. I had been scapegoated, although I really didn't' see it until years later.  I found a place and moved all my stuff out of there.

I'm the type who will endlessly try and reflect and self blame , just in case it truly is my responsibility or fault. I don't want to run away from life, and I don't 'want to give up on anyone if it's workable.  But being left out to such degree was too much for me to fix, especially at just 19 yrs old.  I never regretted that decision and my life got better from there.


If you are the sort who easily moves on then you may need to reflect in the other direction of why you don't try harder. However I'm"sure most of you reading this are the other sort like myself and have trouble knowing when you've given enough, tried enough and when enough is enough.  It's never easy to call it a day.  Responsible sensitive people tend to feel like failures for walking away from something or someone. But I say to you now as my professor did - have you given your all and you are still not happy ? Let yourself walk away.

This is where faith comes in as well. We have to Let go and let God.
Their karma isn't ours to know or fix, and we have a right to be happy
and thrive.