Someone Else’s Happiness, Left Unrepaired

A caring culture easily passes control off as love: if you know what would be better for a person, you are obliged to make him do the right thing. But another person’s happiness cannot be designed without that person taking part.

You can warn, offer information, set a boundary and refuse to take part in a harmful decision. But independence includes the right to be wrong.

This is especially hard when the mistake is obvious. A parent sees the wrong partner. A friend sees a bad job. A doctor sees a harmful habit. A manager sees a decision the employee has not yet learned to judge.

Control sometimes gives a better short-term result. The person does the “right” thing because he has no other option.

He does not, however, acquire the ability to choose. When the control disappears, the old decision comes back — now with the added status of a symbol of freedom.

Respecting autonomy does not require watching any amount of harm passively. Relationships have limits:

I will not give money for this.

I will not allow a child to be put in danger.

I will not live in these conditions.

I am willing to help with a different option.

That way a person governs his own participation rather than someone else’s whole life.

Another person’s happiness cannot be designed from outside. But you can avoid getting in the way of his building it, instead of confiscating the tools every time the drawing looks wrong.

Good intentions do not remove the need to check consent, side effects and the other person’s right to decline the happiness on offer.

They treat without consent, raise children through punishment, ban things in order to protect, resettle people in the name of progress and suppress dissent for the sake of future happiness.

Good intentions reduce the probability of malice. They do not guarantee a good result.

Before intervening it is worth checking:

• whether help was asked for;
• whether we understand the problem;
• who defines the desired result;
• what side effects are possible;
• whether you can start small;
• whether the decision is reversible;
• who answers if it fails;
• whether the recipient is able to refuse.

Doing nothing is also an action with consequences. Sometimes non-intervention preserves freedom. Sometimes it lets harm continue.

So the absence of action should not automatically count as wisdom, nor activity as virtue.

The principle of minimally sufficient intervention is useful:

Do exactly as much as is necessary to protect people and solve the problem, without taking more control than the job requires.

The difference between a boundary and control is visible in the grammar of the sentence. “I will no longer cover your missed deadlines” is about me, and after it the other person is still free to decide for himself. “You are quitting that job immediately” is about him, and it works only through supervision that has to be maintained forever. The first costs one hard conversation. The second costs a permanent presence, and it usually ends with decisions being made silently.

Hence an unpleasant symmetry: the tighter the control, the less information reaches the one doing the controlling. A mistake you could have warned about will be made quietly — simply because telling you about it is not safe.