The Freedom That Comes From Releasing the Favored Role

Favoritism is typically examined from the perspective of those excluded. But Rabia's wisdom about attachment and its costs reveals another angle: the favored person also suffers. Being someone's favorite creates pressure—you must maintain the behavior or qualities that earned favor, you become responsible for the person's emotional well-being, you internalize conditional love. Over time, the favored person loses touch with who they are beneath the performance. They may feel guilty about others' exclusion, anxious about losing favor, or empty when genuine connection based on their full self becomes impossible. Rabia's teaching on renunciation and release speaks to this: the freed person—favored or not—discovers authentic peace. For those who've held the favored role, releasing it means extraordinary freedom: you can fail, change, disappoint without losing love. You can develop relationships based on mutual presence rather than performance. You can show your whole self. Acknowledging this creates compassion for both excluded and favored people within systems of preference. The work becomes collective: together, releasing the structure that benefits some at the cost of all. This perspective transforms favoritism from a problem of unfairness into an opportunity for everyone to experience genuine belonging and freedom.