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Your Role Is Influence, Not Control

Your Role Is Influence, Not Control

 

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

I said it with a mixture of frustration and disappointment. “I’ve explained this so many times,” I told him. “I’ve tried different approaches. I’ve been patient. I’ve been firm. I’ve reasoned with them. I’ve reminded them. But nothing changes.”

He listened without interrupting.

“I honestly don’t know what else I’m supposed to do,” I said, after waiting for almost a minute.

He remained silent for a moment. It was as though he wanted the question to settle before responding. Then he asked quietly, “What is it that you’re trying to achieve?”

The question seemed too obvious. “I want them to change,” I replied.

He nodded, but instead of responding, he asked another question. “And do you think that is your responsibility?”

I looked at him, slightly puzzled. “What do you mean? If I care about someone, of course I want them to change.”

“I didn’t ask what you wanted,” he said gently. “I asked whether it is your responsibility.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. Until that moment, I had never separated the two. Caring for someone and wanting them to change had always seemed inseparable. If someone I loved was making poor decisions, wasn’t it natural to feel responsible for helping them become different?

Perhaps he sensed my confusion. “Tell me,” he said, “have you ever changed simply because someone else wanted you to?”

I smiled sheepishly and said, “No.”

“What made you change?” He asked.

I thought for a while. “Usually…” I said slowly, “I changed when I became convinced that I needed to.”

He nodded again. “So the real decision was yours.”

“Yes.”

“And yet,” he continued, “you expect other people to change merely because you have explained something well.”

I laughed quietly. When he put it that way, it sounded surprisingly unreasonable.

He wasn’t suggesting that explanations don’t matter. Of course they do. Advice can illuminate something we have failed to notice. A sincere conversation can open a door that had remained closed. Sometimes another person’s words become the beginning of a profound change. But none of those things actually cause the change. At best, they invite it. That distinction had never been clear to me before.

He seemed to notice the thought forming in my mind. “You can present an idea,” he said. “You can explain it patiently. You can answer questions. You can even become an example of what you are trying to teach. But you cannot decide on another person’s behalf.”

For a while neither of us spoke. As I reflected on his words, something uncomfortable began to surface. The truth was that I wasn’t merely trying to help. I was trying to make sure they changed. Until that moment, I had never admitted that to myself. I had described my efforts as concern, sincerity, or care. And all of those were genuine. But hidden beneath them was another expectation, one I had never questioned. If I explained things clearly enough… If I found the right words… If I remained patient long enough… Surely they would change.

Looking back, I realized that most of my frustration had not come from their behavior. It had come from the gap between my expectation and reality.

He offered an example. “Imagine a father whose son is making poor choices. The father stays awake at night thinking, ‘Perhaps I haven’t explained it well enough. Maybe I need to speak more firmly. Maybe I need one more conversation.'” He paused for a while and then said, “Do you think the father’s desire is wrong?”

“No,” I replied immediately.

“Neither do I,” he said. “His love is real. His concern is real. But if he begins to believe that his son’s transformation depends entirely upon him, love quietly turns into something else.”

“Control?” I offered.

He smiled and said, “Yes.”

The word lingered in my mind. Control rarely announces itself. It often disguises itself as concern. We convince ourselves that we are simply trying to help, while quietly expecting another person to become who we think they should be. When they don’t, disappointment slowly becomes frustration, frustration becomes pressure, and pressure begins to damage the very relationship we were trying to protect.

I sat there thinking about conversations I had repeated over and over again. Each time, I believed I was offering guidance. But each unsuccessful attempt felt strangely personal, as though their decision reflected my own failure. Now I was beginning to understand why.

I had unconsciously taken responsibility for something that had never belonged to me.

He broke the silence. “You can influence people,” he said. “Sometimes deeply. Sometimes for a lifetime. But influence and control are not the same thing.”

I repeated the sentence quietly to myself. Influence… Not control. For the first time, I realized that I had spent years confusing the two. Perhaps that is why I had become so exhausted. Trying to influence someone requires sincerity, wisdom, and patience. Trying to control them requires carrying a burden no human being was ever meant to carry.

As we stood to leave, he said one final thing. “The moment you believe that another person’s change is your responsibility, you begin carrying a weight that does not belong to you.”

I walked away thinking about that. Maybe the deepest form of care is not found in trying to control another person’s journey, but in faithfully offering what we can, while respecting that the journey itself is still theirs.

Until that day, I had believed that caring meant making sure people changed. Now I was beginning to see that caring and controlling are not the same thing.

And perhaps wisdom begins when we finally learn the difference.

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When Standards Become One’s Own

When Standards Become One’s Own

 

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

I asked him something that had been weighing on me for a long time. “If I want my children to grow up within certain standards,” I said, “how do I make sure those standards actually stay with them?”

He didn’t hesitate. “You start much earlier than you think,” he said. “You start before the child is even born.”

I looked at him, slightly confused.

“The standards you want your children to live by,” he continued, “you must begin cultivating them inside yourself first.”

That landed quietly—but firmly.

He explained that children do not first encounter values through instruction. They encounter them through exposure. Through watching. Through living in an atmosphere where certain ways of being are normal. “The way you speak,” he said. “The way you eat. The way you treat elders. The way you respond to frustration. All of that is education.” Long before a child understands rules, he assimilates patterns. Then he pointed to a stage that every parent eventually faces. “There will come a time,” he said, “when your child will begin to question the standards.” Why do I have to sit like this at the table? Why should I always respect elders? Why should I care about the younger ones? “This questioning,” he said, “is not defiance. It is growth.”

I felt a quiet relief hearing that.

“This stage,” he continued, “is not tied to a fixed age. Some children reach it early, some later. Emotional and intellectual maturity unfold at their own pace.” Trying to force that pace, he warned, creates more damage than we realize. “If you want standards to be internalized rationally,” he said, “this is where most people go wrong.” Instead of engaging, we start instructing. Instead of listening, we start explaining. Instead of exploring, we start preaching.

He shook his head. “Values don’t enter through lectures,” he said. “They enter through conversations.” He introduced an approach that immediately resonated with me. “The Socratic method,” he said, “is unmatched here.” Not telling a child what to think, but asking questions that help him discover why something matters. Why do you think eating together is important? How would you feel if someone ignored you at the table? What kind of home do you want to live in? “These questions,” he said, “create agency.” The child begins to form his own perspective. He is no longer following a rule because someone more powerful said so. He is following it because it has started to feel meaningful.

He made a distinction that stayed with me. “When a child follows a standard only because his father or mother said so,” he said, “that standard lasts only as long as authority is present.” The moment the parent is not watching—or the moment something more attractive appears—the rule dissolves.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it was never his value.” For a value to become one’s own, he explained, it must become attractive. Not externally enforced, but internally chosen. “And that,” he said, “requires maturity.” Intellectual maturity—to understand reasons. Emotional maturity—to tolerate discomfort and delay. “These don’t appear overnight,” he said. “And they cannot be rushed.” Trying to accelerate maturity, he warned, often does the opposite. It creates resistance. Confusion. Delays the very growth we want. “It’s a strange cycle,” he said. “Break it at one point, and the damage spreads everywhere.”

He gave me an example that felt painfully familiar: A child is constantly told to be respectful. He hears it daily. But he watches adults speak harshly, interrupt each other, and mock people they disagree with. “What lesson do you think sticks?” he asked.

Not the instruction. The culture of the environment. Children are extraordinarily sensitive to contradiction. When values are spoken but not lived, they quietly conclude that values are decorative—not real.

I realized how often we try to teach values that we haven’t fully inhabited ourselves. We lecture about patience while being impatient. We demand honesty while practicing convenience. We speak about respect while modeling contempt. He said it plainly. “Children don’t resist values,” he said. “They resist inconsistency.”

As the conversation went on, something else became clear. This process was not one-sided. “Parents don’t just develop children,” he said. “Children develop parents, too.” Their questions force us to reflect on things we’ve never examined. Their curiosity exposes gaps in our own understanding. Their challenges invite us to grow. “This,” he said, “is a mutual developmental journey.” And perhaps that is the hardest part. Because it requires humility—not control.

As I sat with everything he had said, one thought kept returning. Standards cannot be installed. They have to be grown. Slowly. Patiently. Through living, questioning, and shared reflection.

And the most honest realization of all was this: If I want my children to adopt certain values, I must first be willing to let those values continue to develop within me.

Not as rules I impose—but as a life I live.

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Forcing a Seed to become a Tree

Forcing a Seed to become a Tree

 

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

 

“I worry all the time that I’m doing too little,” I said as we watched a toddler wobbling near the park bench. “What if I don’t push enough? What if I fall behind in shaping my child?”

He watched the child quietly for a few moments before speaking. “Do you remember how that journey began?” he asked. “Sitting, crawling, standing, walking—did anyone succeed in forcing it to happen earlier than its time?”

I smiled faintly. “No matter how much we tried, the child always moved according to their own rhythm.”

“Exactly,” he said. “You could sit beside the child all day, hold their hands, encourage them, even beg them—but walking could not be installed by pressure. Nature allowed it only when the body was ready.”

I nodded. I had seen this firsthand. As a new parent, I had once worried because my child was late in taking the first steps. Others’ children seemed to run ahead while mine only crawled. I had felt panic, as if time itself was slipping away. And yet, one quiet evening without warning, those first steps had come—naturally, effortlessly, as if waiting had always been the plan.

“That same principle,” he continued, “applies to moral development.”

I turned toward him. “You mean character and values?”

“Yes,” he replied. “A child’s inner desire to do good—to choose honesty, kindness, responsibility—emerges through a gradual developmental process. It is not something that can be injected by force.”

I felt a slight unease rise inside me. “But we correct, we discipline, we instruct… aren’t we supposed to?”

“Guidance is essential,” he said gently. “But replacing time with pressure is where things turn dangerous. When you try to accelerate a process that is meant to unfold slowly, it often backfires.”

I thought of a boy I once knew—strictly trained, heavily monitored. His parents enforced rules with military precision. The boy behaved perfectly at home. But outside, away from their eyes, his behavior collapsed completely. The goodness had never become his own.

“That’s what happens,” he said. “When values are only enforced, not internalized, they collapse the moment authority disappears.”

“So what is our role, then?” I asked quietly.

“To create the right environment,” he answered. “Just as you make a child feel safe enough to attempt walking, you make them feel trusted enough to attempt goodness. You demonstrate it. You talk about it. You live it. But you allow it the time it needs to grow roots.”

I watched the toddler stumble and fall softly onto the grass. The child looked up, startled for a second, then tried again. No one scolded. No one rushed. The child wasn’t afraid to fail.

“That,” he said, pointing gently, “is how moral courage is born too—when failure is not punished with humiliation, but treated as a part of learning.”

I felt a slow clarity spread within me.

“You know,” I said after a pause, “I’ve often reacted in fear—fear that if I don’t force goodness early, it may never come.”

He nodded. “That fear is common. But forcing speed into development does not create strength—it creates cracks.”

I remembered another parent who proudly claimed that their child had memorized moral rules at a very young age. Years later, the same child struggled deeply with dishonesty and rebellion. The rules had entered the mind—but never the heart.

“Values must become a desire,” he said quietly. “Not just a requirement.”

“And desire,” I added slowly, “cannot be manufactured under pressure.”

“Exactly,” he replied. “Just as language appears when the mind is ready, and walking when the body is ready, conscience awakens when the emotional and moral world is ready. You can nurture readiness—but you cannot command awakening.”

We sat in silence for a moment.

“So, if I rush this process,” I said, “trying to speed it up with control, fear, or constant pressure…”

“You risk turning natural growth into resistance,” he completed the thought.

The toddler finally managed a few confident steps and burst into laughter, unaware of the lesson unfolding silently around us.

I exhaled slowly.

“So maybe true parenting,” I said, “is not about pushing development—but about protecting it from being damaged by our impatience.”

He smiled. “Now you’re understanding it.”

As we stood to leave, I felt lighter than I had in months. The urgency to rush, to force, to control had softened into something steadier: trust.

Trust in time. Trust in the process. Trust in quiet growth.

Because a seed does not need to be shouted at to become a tree.

It only needs soil, water, light—and patience.

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