By Dina Aldabbagh

You’re craving a burger, so you hit the streets in search. There’s a Wendy’s right next to a Starbucks, and the Starbucks is completely packed — everyone seems to be going there. You walk on inside and ask for a burger, and the barista looks at you in confusion: “We don’t have burgers.” You look around in embarrassment and pain, because everyone else in the Starbucks seems to be well satisfied with their orders, and here you are left out in the dust. “How did this place have something for ALL these people, and not for me? Wanting a burger isn’t a bad thing, is it? I’m not wrong for desiring a burger, right? I can’t help my cravings.”

You’re hurt. You feel singled out. You’re the only one left unsatisfied in this Starbucks — and this feels personal. But it’s not. You just walked into the wrong restaurant to get this thing. If you walk out those doors and turn to your right, you’ll walk into a restaurant where everyone else is eating a burger, and most of the menu items are some variation of burger — where there is no lack of the thing you want. Starbucks just isn’t the place for you at this moment in time, Wendy’s is. But if you walk into the Starbucks because you think it “should” work, you’re trying to force the Starbucks to be something it’s not. You’re trying to make them offer an item that they don’t even have in stock.

This doesn’t mean your desire for a burger is wrong, or that it’s harder to get a burger than a coffee, or that you deserve your desire less than everyone else. It just means that you’re asking the wrong place to give you the thing you want. 

Don’t order what’s not on the menu. This will save you so much internal pain. If you walk into somewhere and want to make it into the thing that will give you what you’re searching for, rather than seeing what it has to offer and if that can satisfy you, you’re swimming against the current. You can’t extract from a place what they don’t even have available. If it’s not on the menu, you can’t order it. If it’s not readily available, you can’t make them give it to you. Because they can’t give you what they don’t have. 

I’m not talking about restaurants. We’ve all been there where we wanted something from someone — we wanted them to act a certain way — that they just won’t. You believe they have it in them to act better, to rise up, and maybe they even claim to want to, but they just can’t show up in the way you need them to. Instead of accepting that their actions simply aren’t aligning with our needs and moving on, we harp on it. We try to make them show up in the way we want. We try to get them to change, grow, or mature. But that’s not something anyone can ever do for someone else. You can be an example, but you can’t do it for them. 

Wanting someone or something specific and wanting a specific need fulfilled are two separate desires. Sometimes they align, sometimes they clash. But you can’t demand to have both. You get to choose. In any situation, choose who or what you want and accept what limitations and benefits come with it or choose the need you want to be fulfilled. However, you cannot demand that this specific thing fills this specific need. 

You can say, “I’ll love and accept my friend as a person no matter who he is,” and, “I’m going to seek out relationships that put in the effort to make plans with me so that I feel valued,” but you cannot say, “this friend, specifically, must always show me that he’s putting in effort to make plans so I feel valued by him. And he can’t not. He, specifically, must.” Because…what happens if he doesn’t? Now because you’re needing him to act in a certain way, you’re going to feel powerless, undervalued, and unsettled in your spirit since your expectation of what “should” happen is not being carried out. 

Sometimes we get mad at someone for not doing something, but really the case is that they don’t know how. At an elementary school, the gym teacher told a student to tie his shoelaces as they were about to start playing a running game. The teacher went on explaining the parameters and forgot about the kid. The boy played the game with his shoes untied, and after game one, the teacher yelled exasperatedly, “I told you to tie your shoes!” Later, during game two, the teacher noticed for a third time that this child still didn’t tie his shoes. The teacher turned to me and exclaimed, “Unbelievable!” and then exploded at the child to step out of the game and tie his shoes.  

For a moment, I was in disbelief too. “He really can’t listen to a simple direction?” But I quickly realized another possibility may be true: “Maybe he doesn’t know how to tie his shoes.” I watched the boy sit on the bench, twiddling with the shoelaces. He attempted to twist and tie the shoelaces multiple times in a way that seemed accurate, but didn’t result in his shoes being tied. He knew the general representation of what tying one’s shoes looked like, but he didn’t know the actual manner of carrying it out. He wasn’t rebellious, malicious, or “bad,” he was untrained. 

I walked over to the bench and asked him if he knew how to tie his shoes — he shook his head no. Sometimes we think someone’s lack of correct behavior is an offense or has malicious intent, but really they just don’t know how to do the right thing. When you consider their position, that can be an embarrassing thing to admit. The little boy allowed the teacher to reprimand him publicly three times without ever openly confessing that he didn’t know how to tie his shoes, and he needed help. He preferred to be thought disobedient over stupid. 

When we get to these points in life where we “should” know how to do the proper thing, but were never given the tools to carry it out, we feel ashamed and embarrassed. We don’t want to admit that. At a certain point, we’re all expected to know how to tie our shoes. So if you’re past that point of feeling like it’s still the “normal period” of development, your shame will have you trying to hide the things you don’t know from the world.

If you’re 15 years old and still don’t know how to tie your shoes, you’d rather walk around with them untied, pretending you don’t WANT them to be tied. Because at least this is a choice, thus a position of power. It’s not because you’re weak and stupid. No, it is a decision to be this way, not an effect done unto you. You’ll actually take offense to anyone who wants to help teach you how to tie your shoes or to do it for you because you’ll think, “They see my inadequacies. They know the places where I am not good enough.”

Can I challenge you? Maybe that person is not “bad,” maybe they are unequipped. There are times when someone doesn’t show up as fully as necessary to meet our needs and we’re prompted to feel offended. “What? They don’t care about honoring what I need? They don’t think I matter?” Perhaps that’s not it. They might just not have the capacity to hold the thing you’re asking for. And if they don’t have it, how can they give it to you? 

Sometimes you’re asking someone to show up for you who is struggling to show up for themselves. This doesn’t make you wrong, it just signifies that you are currently capable of more than them. More kindness, more consideration, more gentleness, more love, more patience, more effort. And to a person who lives every day being able to produce and hold space for such lovely qualities with ease, you don’t always realize how incapable another person is of doing the same. You may think, “I’m not special. If I can do it, they can too.” Let’s change that to, “If I exist, and I am capable of these things, then surely there are other people out there that are too,” and you just need to go to the right restaurant to be able to order it. 

Your capacity for more also doesn’t pin you with the responsibility of bringing anyone else up to par. Even if you so want to help them, your direct help may not be what they need. Maybe all they need from you is an example of what it looks like to have the capacity for these things. Your intentions may be pure hearted, too. The teacher wasn’t wrong to want the kid to tie his shoes, it was in his best interest. He didn’t want him to trip and get injured. But instead of being mad at someone for not having the same capacity as you, give them grace. And even more importantly, let them be. If they’re seeking explicit help, then isn’t it lucky that God put you in their path? But so much of the time, your desire to help them or your petition for them to show up greater than they can really just makes them feel exposed. 

“They see me.” But they don’t want their shortcomings to be seen. Why is it that the kids who struggle the most in class ask for the least help while the most advanced kids so openly ask for it? Because the kids who struggle don’t want to highlight the areas in which they are deficient. To them, every time they ask for help, they’re shining a spotlight on the ways they don’t measure up. They don’t want to be seen in their inadequacies. In stark contrast to this, the kids who already feel secure in their intelligence and ability don’t think them asking for help means that they aren’t already good enough, but that they deserve to be even better. 

It’s not necessarily that this person wants to treat you this way or is willingly disappointing you, but rather that they don’t have the capacity to satisfy your needs. So don’t take it personally and don’t be upset that they can’t be there for you because they are probably trying, they’re just barely there for themselves. Their ceiling is your floor. 

In accepting this person as they are and acknowledging the limitations of what they can offer you, you are then given the power to decide how you want to interact with them and the importance you want to give them in your life. Not as a punishment to them, but as a natural consequence of your reaction to their actions. It shifts from reactivity to empowerment. The ball moves to your court. You allow, and then you adjust accordingly. This is the power of choice. When you cede the choice for the other person to show up in the way they can, you claim the power of choosing to show up in the way that feels right to you. 

It’s freeing. When you don’t need someone to act in any specific way, you don’t feel the inner turmoil in your spirit that says “something is going wrong” just because it’s not going the way you wish. When you feel this freedom, you don’t feel pressured to have to show up a certain way either. In permitting others to do what they want, you in turn give yourself the freedom to do what you want. But when you put so much pressure on another person to act in a certain manner, anything outside of those bounds results in disappointment, shaming, and a sense of a loss of control. 

But here is the most crucial part about this framework: this does not mean you have to permit whatever type of behavior in your life. This all leads to this point. I’m not telling you to allow in any kind of treatment merely because you see through it. Just because you understand it doesn’t mean you have to allow it. You can fully understand why someone is doing the thing they are, and feel compassion for them, without sacrificing your boundaries and standards. Whilst standing firm in, “This isn’t good enough for me. And while I accept that this is as far as this person can meet me in their behavior, I’m not going to receive it.” It doesn’t mean you have to swallow the treatment, it just means you don’t have to be mad about it. Accepting it doesn’t let them off the hook, it lets you off the hook. You don’t have to let someone else’s behavior get you upset or make it mean anything about you.

Once you recognize someone’s limitations without judgment, then you can release them, or, your desire for them. This understanding is so that you don’t take it personal, but rather understand that it’s not about you anyways. Someone not treating you the way you deserve really does speak more to their capacity to give you that level of treatment than it does your worthiness of receiving goodness from them. It highlights their emotional toolkit, not your value.

Further, they don’t need your judgement. They can’t be what you’re seeking and it doesn’t benefit you or them to be upset at them over that. It’s like being mad at a child for not being able to understand and talk you through the depths of your emotional pain. An emotionally sound, mature adult would never expect that of a child — or take it personally — because they know that child simply doesn’t have the capacity to fully grasp and make sense of their emotions. So instead of being mad at that person, you really just look at them with understanding — “Oh, I see you want to be there for me, but you don’t know how to.” It’s a gentle, sympathetic sort of grace. You are more emotionally equipped to show up for yourself and others than they are for themselves and others. 

Once you can understand, “it’s not about me,” you can look at that person with love. Not bitterness. Not condescension. Not pretending not to care. But instead, true compassion without self-abandonment. Then you shift. You stop trying to convince emotionally unavailable people to value you. You stop wondering what you did wrong. You stop bending to make your standards or desires “less much” for people who haven’t built the emotional capacity for more. And instead, you get to say — with true grace: “I see you. And I won’t punish you for not being ready. But I also won’t shrink to meet you where you are.”

Even our own parents let us down. Even the people who birthed us cannot meet all of our needs. What’s more — no partner, friend, child, job, house, or community can meet all your needs. You are the one most capable of meeting the majority of your needs, and even still, you can’t meet all of them. Some things only God can do.

What our parents didn’t give us, we seek out in the world, but no one human being or thing can give us everything we seek. Life is a webbed net of getting parts of our needs met by all these different people — friends, coworkers, romantic partners, parents, siblings, ourselves, and God. 

This doesn’t mean everyone is worthless because they can’t be the solution for the satisfaction of your soul, but actually that you have more power than you think — because life is abundant with options. Look at the “menu” that everyone and everything brings to the table, and take what works for you. Pay them back with what you have in stock in your own store. Whether we know it or not, we’re always doing this anyways. Becoming conscious of it allows you to stay glad in the face of other people’s incapabilities — because you know that if they can’t offer it, you don’t need it from them. You understand that they don’t have to be the source to give it to you, and you can find it from somewhere else.