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An Intentional Life
My best friend was a puppet.
OK, I know that sounds strange (if you’re not Jim Henson) to say. I don’t mean a puppet in the sense of a fuzzy toy with a hand-hole that you make ‘talk’ to people. I mean one of those marionette puppets; the ones with the strings attached to all of its limbs.
I say this because, like many people, everything she did for most of her life was because someone else was manipulating her strings. Well…let me backup for a second…she did things because she BELIEVED that other people were pulling her strings.
That belief kept said friend on autopilot for 40 years.
How do I know that she believed that other people were working her strings? Her language, for one. She routinely would use words such as, “I have to…” and “I better do this” and “What if?” She uses what I call “puppet language.” (I just made that up, by the way; it works.)
Many of her actions also reflected this ‘pulling of the strings.’ She literally would always jump to please people. She rarely questioned things, she just did them. She took action on things in the hopes that people would like her or say, “good job,” or tell her they were ‘proud’ of her. That’s the reason she did those things.
She has spent a lifetime giving, giving, giving and not realizing that she has taken, taken, taken…from…
