Listen to the cry of the strong people. The responsible ones. The ones you can always lean on. This morning I will try to give you a glimpse into their psyche.
We all know the type. Usually this is a person who is thoroughly, reliably fine.
The sort you can always count on, who does his tasks daily with devotion, never complains, never refuses a request for help, is usually very pleasant and attentive, and whose giving is genuinely continuous and dependable.
If you have caught yourself one of those, you have struck gold. Haven't you?
Well, no.
I have heard from a good many such women and men, and you would be surprised. Strong people also have needs, desires, inner doubt, and even, heaven preserve us, a wish to be indulged and to mess about occasionally.
But this is where their environment misses them. The people around a strong person interpret him in a completely different way from how he interprets himself.
If I had to describe the gap using an analogy from banking, I would say that the strong person relates to himself as a savings plan, while everyone around him relates to him as a generous current account.
Even a strong, responsible, reassuring person expects, at the end of the day or the month or the year, some return on his efforts. He too believes in reciprocity. The chief characteristic of the strong person is that he has internalised the ancient message that respect has to be earned through work.
Hence the savings plan analogy. The strong type understood — presumably through childhood experience and a certain kind of family — that first of all one must invest.
But he never gave up the aspiration to pick the fruit one day. Never. And this is where he misses. Sometimes.
Because the men and women around him interpret him entirely differently. As far as they are concerned, once they have grown accustomed to the good, they receive it gladly at the first stage and take it for granted at the second. Is there someone here who gives and gives? Fine. Let him carry on giving.
Hence the banking analogy: they relate to him as a current account with a balance that never runs out.
And because no person is really a wall, and life is complicated and full of surprises, the moment arrives when the strong person presents the bill.
And the people around him clutch their heads in astonishment. This is not the contract we signed. You were supposed to give everything without asking. What has come over you?
This is something you need to internalise properly about the strong person. He also has red lines. And more sharply than that — because we are dealing with an active person, one who knows how to act and does not shy away from decisions, the moment he resolves in his heart to stop investing in you and move on, the story is fairly well closed.
You can go looking for him. Strong people know very well how to perform a complete shutdown.
So if you have identified a strong person in your vicinity who gives without limits, here is a recommendation: surprise him occasionally with a coffee and a croissant, just because. For no reason at all.