“Do you really think that if you force another to keep a promise that you will have escaped injury? I tell you this: More damage has been done to others by persons leading lives of quiet desperation (that is, doing what they felt they “had” to do) than ever was done by persons freely doing what they wanted to do.
When you give a person freedom, you remove danger, you don’t increase it. Yes, letting someone “off the hook” on a promise or commitment made to you may look like it will hurt you in the short run, but it will never damage you in the long run, because when you give the other person their freedom, you give yourself freedom as well. And so now you are free of the agonies and the sorrows, the attacks on your dignity and your self-worth that inevitably follow when you force another person to keep a promise to you that he or she does not want to keep.
The longer damage will far outweigh the shorter – as nearly everyone who has tried to hold another person to their word has discovered.”
Neale Donald Walsch, in “Conversations with God Book 3”
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Jeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, launched Pondercentral.com in April 2007 as a Web-based forum for “PONDER on THIS,” a series of weekday inspirational email messages he began sending to subscribers in March 1999. A FREE service since its inception, “PONDER on THIS” provides subscribers with meaningful content to assist them on their individual paths of spiritual growth. In addition, it benefits subscribers, authors, and publishers by including links to Amazon.com where subscribers can learn more about the book being quoted, and also purchase it.
