He is tired of giving, tired too of considering what others might need. He is only reluctantly willing to honor commitments, and determined to make no new ones. Giving is not so terrible a thing, but he wants now to stop. Not so that he can instead take, but rather so he can do nothing. It is to me an understandable notion, but as long as there is life it will be marked by this focus on what is needed or wanted by someone else, and so if there is a change it will be in the reluctance with which he responds rather than in the responding. For whatever reasons we get into patterns and styles, ways in which we deal with others, and for him (and maybe me as well) it has become centered on what is their need and on what is the right thing to do, with the right thing defined by response rather than avoidance of it.
We would like to think in giving we also receive, and that is true much of the time, but giving is sometimes just giving, and there are times when it is more a burden than it ought to be. To stop giving is perhaps why people anticipate retirement and why we welcome independence in children. It is why zeal gives way to tolerance, and I well understand his wish, but life is not so easily latered.
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