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   %OFFICIOUS DUTY RESPONSIBLE ATTACH LACK SERENITY 870309

     Officious  people volunteer their services where they
are neither asked for nor needed.  They feel/believe it is
their  duty  to  be  helpful  in  guiding  others  through
officious assistance.   They are paternalistic toward many
people whom they judge to be  in  need of assistance,  the
assistance  which  they  themselves are  willing  to  make
sacrifices to offer.

     Officious   people   tend  to  be   highly   involved
emotionally, attached emotionally to the situations/people
whom  they  seek to rescue.   Success at being helpful  is
very  important  to them.  Their salvation rests in  being
helpful  and they can not rest until they  have  fulfilled
their duty to be helpful;  serenity can or must wait until
later.

     Officious people need  to learn that they  need to be
serene before they can be genuinely  helpful.  Serenity is
a prerequisite to being helpful,  not the reward for being
helpful.   Serenity is not possible  so long  as  they are
officiously attached to other people's problems, entangled
in  their conflicts,  and  perhaps  contributing   to  the
generation  of  conflicts.   Officious  people are  rarely
genuinely welcome,   although some  people are addicted to
their "helpful"  service  of supplying the fix  upon which
they  depend.    Some  addicts  are addicted to  officious
people and their enabling help;  help  which  enables  the
addict to evade  the  responsibilities which the officious
people attach themselves to.

     Misguided generosity leads officious people to try to
give   to  others  that  which  can  not  be  given,   the
fulfillment  of the others' responsibilities.   It  is not
charitable,  helpful,  or loving to lift from others their
burden of fulfilling their own responsibilities.  To do so
is  to teach them to be irresponsible and to lose power to
the  meddlesome officious people.   Meddlesome people  are
not  qualified  to wield increased power.   They  need  to
learn  that  serenity  comes  from  fulfilling  their  own
responsibilities,   and  from letting other people fulfill
their own responsibilities.   No  person can  fulfill  the
responsibilities of another person with integrity.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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