Truly responsible people are set apart, among other things, by the fact that they relate fully with the last people and the last circumstances they feel like getting close to. That's a special degree of Commitment.
This is my current "being human for today" challenge.
I've only recently fully faced the fact that we (me included) judge another person in order to justify our choice to avoid a further or deeper relationship with that person. We judge, criticise and condemn others to justify to ourselves and others our lack of courage and will.
Yes, as we grow older, it takes courage and will to do something that once was as natural to us as breathing. We popped out of the birth canal and immediately set about exploring this new, larger womb we found ourselves in, and bonding with it. It is a natural, innate urge.
So what went wrong? Why did we stop connecting with and start separating from? Well, some of the bonding we undertook didn't turn out as we thought it should, and we got scared and self-protective. We started habits of evaluating risk and selecting who was "in" and who would be "out". And even then some of our "in" choices turned to disappointment. We got hurt, and put up shutters, aided and abetted by well-meaning others who warned us to "be more careful".
When someone dis-appoints us, we may make an unconscious decision to end the relationship. But we don't do it cleanly and openly. We first go fossicking around for unrelated material that we can use to publicly justify cutting off. And finding fault turns out to be the easiest task in the world. As the song says --Everyone's doin' it. We not only find things in their demeanour and behaviour to niggle and annoy us, we'll even take aspects of them that first attracted them to us and turn them around into negatives. For example, the girl who was attracted to her man because he was solid and dependable now finds him "boring", Because he's so unexciting she can now feel justified in looking for excitement elsewhere. Much easier than engaging with him and her own boredom....
When we successfully find flaws in another person's character, the truth is that the other person has not changed: we have. But we won't cop to that and deal with it creatively. It's easier to find fault and dismiss the other, mostly without insightful explanation. We shift the responsibility on to someones or somethings else, then we lie about it -- to ourself and to others, usually coating our accusations with degrees of anger and resentment.
We react with, and use the power of anger and the convenience of blame to avoid our life-responsibilities of relationship. And a significant casualty of avoidance is our freedom. Ironic. isn't it? We split with someone to "get free" and find the end result is the polar opposite.
Relationship requires Courage. It's far easier to avoid our life responsibilities, cling to the lies that "he's an unfeeling arsehole", and throw up annoying examples of his faults which our "friends" will go "tut-tut" and "there-there" to. Anyone who doesn't give us agreement is also consigned to the Fault-Finder list.
It takes real courage to realise and admit that, despite how "right" we are, these dynamics are not working any more. It takes intention and guts to change the habits that separate us -- from each other and from our selves.
In failing relationships, I'm finding that Courage is always a key issue.
The things we evaluate others for, whether they be qualities or deeds we envy or condemn, are not the truth of those people. They are parts of ourselves that we project onto them. They are parts of ourselves that we lack the courage to make space for and contentedly abide, in ourselves and in others.
In lying to ourselves about ourselves (and others), we find ourselves mired in an all-too-human quandary -- it seems that we've learned to hang onto lies to get by, and forgotten that we need Truth in order to live. It doesn't take too much imagination to envision where that mistake is heading us.
So what is it that we desire? Wanting is the essence of life evolving. What do you want?
A hideous truth is revealing itself to me. In anxiety and fear the most monstrous and basest behaviour alternatives are closer and easier to us than deeds of empathy, and compassion. To be altruistic we have to get off our arses, reach out, and risk standing alone and getting our hands dirtied. It takes surrender, courage and commitment to a better self to break through to our true and higher nature.
Yet while we won't take the trouble to better ourselves, we expect the world to somehow better itself while we're out on the world's longest lunchbreak, waiting for a saviour. We are gazing balefully into the eye of God and whingeing "Look what you've done to me. It's your fault; you fix it."
My life quest began, I think, with two questions -- "Who (am I)"? and "Why (am I here)"? Those questions have attracted answers in the form of a splendid smorgasbord of circumstances and supporting characters putting together a unique lifetime of artifices and fireside yarns, ending in --- Nothing
Which after all is where we came from, isn't it? We emerged from Nothing (the kind of "nothing" that is Everything suspended in possibility) in order to create Something. Why? For entertainment? For the wisdom of experience?
And if we're doing it this time, we might just have done it before (how many times?), and might just do it again (how many times?). I mean, time is no object, and even Heaven gets boring after a while. Just ask Adam and Eve.
Nothing matters. I find myself now strangely relieved and excited by this.
