From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,3e08c98d7ce85399 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Mark Lundquist Subject: Re: Kindness Date: 1999/09/10 Message-ID: <37D963E9.EFD1C218@rational.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 523518974 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <37CC6844.AB898EEE@rational.com> <37d0608e@news1.us.ibm.net> <37D7FEC8.8EB3B2F4@msfc.nasa.gov> Organization: Rational Software Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-09-10T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Hmm, this thread has gone from "kindness", to "homework", and back to "kindness" again, all on its own. Will it ever make it back to Ada? I doubt it... :-) James William Zuercher wrote: > A very long time ago a very good friend of mine, and a very wise soul told me "If > anyone asks you for help, if it is within your means to provide what they ask for, > give it." "You can't control what they do with what you give them." "However they > thought they needed help and you have supplied it." "That is what truly matters." There's a kernel of truth there: "You can't control what they do with what you give them." That may be true, but it doesn't excuse you from the responsibility to give them the right thing. The outcome of the scenario depends on both. Your responsibility ends where you have given the right thing -- not necessarily what they asked for. Crassly put, you are saying that your duty to the other person is to make them feel good ("Ah, you gave me the help I asked for, thank you..."). But doing that may be detrimental to them, and it may be detrimental to you. I highly recommend these two books for their clarity on this issue: - "Boundaries", by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. Though it's written from a Christian world view, I don't think their priniciples would be hard to swallow even for an atheist (maybe some atheist can read the book and tell me if I'm right about that... :-) - "Parenting With Love and Logic", by Jim Fay and Foster Kline. The context is child-raising, but the relational principles are pretty much universal.