I had an experience today that was a little challenging.
I'll not go into details but it was a touch upsetting because someone misunderstood my motives and went behind my back to someone else instead of coming to me. In trying to understand what went wrong and what I could have done differently, I did learn some lessons about human behavior and also about how insidious my desire to please people (or should I say "people-please" as a verb) really is.
I'm learning - and relearning - and relearning - that I am a distinct person from others, and others are separate from me. I don't HAVE to feel bad (or glad, or sad) because they feel that way. I shouldn't expect them to feel a certain way just because I do. I keep relearning it because ... well, it's new to me and I need practice.
This separate-ness is a hard lesson for someone whose whole life revolved around having everyone approve of me, and not making anybody mad, and wanting desperately for someone to give two hoots about me - to the point of changing myself into what I thought they wanted ... just to be accepted. And not letting people know (out of fear they'd reject me) that they'd crossed a line.
The truth is, I lived in an amorphous liquid mass, a pool of mire in which my identity was tied up in everyone else's - and I assumed that everyone else's identity was tied up in mine.
In some cases it was more than in others, and I believed that that state of being - that miry homogenous existence - was called love.
It isn't love. It's dysfunction. It's unhealthy: a collective consciousness in which I become swallowed up in the wishes and thoughts of others and no longer have an individuality of my own. It's - well, for Star Trek TNG and Voyager fans, it's the Borg!
I am a unique person, created with God-given gifts and talents. So is this person, and that one, and all of them individually. Learning that they exist apart from me (although our lives may touch each other in some way) has been so freeing for me. And it is equally liberating every time I relearn it too... because it's when I start to slip back into that black, oily mire in which nothing is distinctive and it all melds together - that the lesson of detachment is the strongest and most life-giving. It helps me to take responsibility for my own actions, and allow other people to take responsibility for theirs. It takes the burden off me that was never intended to be there, and allows me to respond instead of react, to have compassion and confidence rather than cringing at what someone else might think.
And that's a big deal.
I'll not go into details but it was a touch upsetting because someone misunderstood my motives and went behind my back to someone else instead of coming to me. In trying to understand what went wrong and what I could have done differently, I did learn some lessons about human behavior and also about how insidious my desire to please people (or should I say "people-please" as a verb) really is.
I'm learning - and relearning - and relearning - that I am a distinct person from others, and others are separate from me. I don't HAVE to feel bad (or glad, or sad) because they feel that way. I shouldn't expect them to feel a certain way just because I do. I keep relearning it because ... well, it's new to me and I need practice.
This separate-ness is a hard lesson for someone whose whole life revolved around having everyone approve of me, and not making anybody mad, and wanting desperately for someone to give two hoots about me - to the point of changing myself into what I thought they wanted ... just to be accepted. And not letting people know (out of fear they'd reject me) that they'd crossed a line.
The truth is, I lived in an amorphous liquid mass, a pool of mire in which my identity was tied up in everyone else's - and I assumed that everyone else's identity was tied up in mine.
In some cases it was more than in others, and I believed that that state of being - that miry homogenous existence - was called love.
It isn't love. It's dysfunction. It's unhealthy: a collective consciousness in which I become swallowed up in the wishes and thoughts of others and no longer have an individuality of my own. It's - well, for Star Trek TNG and Voyager fans, it's the Borg!
I am a unique person, created with God-given gifts and talents. So is this person, and that one, and all of them individually. Learning that they exist apart from me (although our lives may touch each other in some way) has been so freeing for me. And it is equally liberating every time I relearn it too... because it's when I start to slip back into that black, oily mire in which nothing is distinctive and it all melds together - that the lesson of detachment is the strongest and most life-giving. It helps me to take responsibility for my own actions, and allow other people to take responsibility for theirs. It takes the burden off me that was never intended to be there, and allows me to respond instead of react, to have compassion and confidence rather than cringing at what someone else might think.
And that's a big deal.
No comments:
Post a Comment