a big problem
I was watching a show on TLC the other night about a teenager who weighed 800 lbs. At 18 he was so heavy that he could not get out of his chair and literally started to grow into the furniture. His life consisted of eating, sleeping, and watching TV. The one thing morbidly obese people have in common is an enabler, and the results of good intentions gone bad. It is impossible to become that heavy on your own. Once you reach the pathetic state of immobility the natural course of things dictate that you will either die of thirst or lose enough weight to allow yourself to once again get up and eat. The cycle will continue indefinitely, indulgence and attrition, however, with an enabler the bounds of excess are limitless.
Enablers are driven by the selfish satisfaction of fulfilling someone else’s desires. They like to provide regardless of need, and fail to see the consequences of their own excess. In the case of the insanely heavy teen, his mother doted on him hand and foot, delivering him over 5,000 calories a day. She brought him movies and video games, and in an effort to make him comfortable and to provide for him, inadvertently became his jailer. He became completely dependent on her. She was both keeping him alive and killing him.
When we are entrusted with providing there is a line where providing turns to enabling, and enabling turns to killing. It is hard to watch someone suffer, but sometimes the alternative is worse.
How random was this post?