One of the hardest lessons in life is accepting and understanding that the “you” that you see yourself as is not always what others see when they look at you. It has stymied me for far longer than I suppose it should have, but I think I finally realize that it’s actually “ok” and it doesn’t automatically mean I’m a bad person.
It just means that there’s some manner of blind spot that makes a particular connection either impossible, or so fraught with pain and suffering as the “ante” that it is ultimately unattractive for one or both or all involved.
I cannot see the part of me that engenders anger and rejection and negativity in another.
Another cannot see the part of themself that engenders anger and rejection and negativity in me.
I cannot see the part of another that is caring, gentle, and loving.
Another cannot see the part of me that is caring, gentle, and loving.
It is no one’s “fault”. There is no “blame”.
Each, both, any, or all of “us” involved are completely valid in the opinions and perspectives held, just as we are completely imprisoned by our respective inability to forgo demanding of others that which we refuse, ourselves, to freely give.
I ponder this in much longer swaths of thought and over-analysis than “they” tell me I should. They do not understand that it is important to me to strive always to be and see as simply and clearly as possible, nor that to do so, I have to actually face and deal with all this cerebral spinning in order to get to those “simple”, “clear” things.
Trust me when I tell you that no one actively chooses to have this unfortunate penchant of mind. Even as another (and I, candidly) will swear that, objectively, it’s all a choice, all the time.
We’re all right. It’s a matter of how much you have given yourself, really.
You cannot give to another that which you have not first deeply assimilated within yourself.
How can a child blind from birth tell you what it is like to see?
How can a child sighted from birth tell a blind child what it is like to be blind?
How do you know what it is to love unconditionally if you cannot or do not have that unconditional love for yourself?
Indeed, how do you show someone else a concept you know only by dream or meme?
Someone very important to me “knows” to the core of their being all about the conceptual construct labeled “me” in their mind.
That conceptual construct is as alike to me as a grain of sand is alike a black hole.
They can say the same about me.
We are both correct. But neither of us will ever be right about the other.
We can only ever be right on our perception of their intention (the reflection of ourselves, given as belonging to another).
The intention of another can only be known in and of themselves. It is imponderable. Truly. How much time do we all waste on trying? Banal. Sorrowful.
But here’s the thing that I think begins to a long, long last make “the difference” for me – I cannot love this person as they want to be loved. I can only love them the way I know to love myself.
And my knowing of love is shallow and woefully under-developed.
Well, it was… it’s changing. I am changing.
We all are, really; bountiful good fortune, the counter-intuitive axiom a la paradox that is, “The only thing that does not change is that all things ever change.”
I am an amazingly resilient, incredibly devoted, insanely hopeful, cursedly stubborn, and utterly willful being.
My halos are translucent to the point of being anti-matter.
My horns are sharp, well formed, and lethal.
My tail was lost long ago; I dubbed it “Eeyore” and gave it an empty seat in my mind where, on rare occasion, the echo of its melancholy reaches and rests.
My life is as event filled as it is caring leeched.
I have fought longer and harder to be where I am than most can bring themselves to believe; mostly because we are cursed to believe that we alone knows “this feeling”, “this sense”, “this reality”.
Everyone is the hero of their own story.
Everyone who will ever read this knows what it is to feel unloved.
Everyone who will ever read this knows what it is to be loving.
Everyone who will ever read this knows you can’t be loving if you feel unloved.
Everyone who will ever read this knows the previous sentence is false.
Everyone who will ever read this knows that being loving to yourself means not engaging with those to whom you cannot be loving.
This is my realization:
The degree to which you can simply love another as they are is the degree to which you have learned to love yourself as you are, simply. ~BLB~
I do not yet love myself well enough to be loving to those are not loving toward me.
I wish I did. But not enough to make it worse by continuing to try.
Not anymore.
You taught me that one, HMR. Thank you for that. I know you cannot see this of me. It’s ok. I had the same problem with you. My only wish is that your happiness grow brighter and warmer and nestle you comfortably every day of the rest of your life.
I wish you the same, reader, whether I “knew” you, “know” you, or “knew you not at all”.
Loving, like sunlight,
Indiscriminately pure,
Unconditional