The past few days I got to spend time with a really good friend. I haven’t known them for long, but it’s one of those people that, although you haven’t known known for years, it feels like you have.
And, well, we talked a lot, mostly about people, life, and things in general, often diving unusually deep, relative to the conversations I have on a typical day.
The thing is, this got me thinking…and quite a bit actually. This was after I had left and gone on to do my own thing. This is because, while I’ve somewhat revealed this bit of information on here, and on other mediums, I spend quite a bit of time alone. This is mostly due to the situation I’ve been put in for reasons beyond my understanding.
In this time, I’ve gotten to do a lot of self-reflection, as well as learning about things that interest me and overall just making myself a better, less naive and fragile person.
The problem with all of that is, although I may share quite a bit of the stuff I’ve learned on my blog and other media, it doesn’t quite replace the feeling and experience of sharing it with a real, live person face-to-face.
That’s because when you’re talking to them, whether on the phone or in-person, most of the time, they don’t have time to “think of a good response”, and the response you get is a genuine, gut response. And the response you get is not just in the words they choose, but in the way they react, the body language they project.
And this was really interesting in seeing my friend react to what I had to say, as well as hearing what she had to say in response.
The biggest thing it made me think was that, maybe I’ve been given a crappy situation, and maybe I’ve dwelled on it a bit too much. And maybe I might think no one can see the world the way I do, or think the way I do, but what I’m feeling, and what I’m going through is not unique, and some people have gone through much worse, but they still find a way to stay positive.
And this is really a toxic way of perceiving yourself (and myself in particular) because what it does is, it’s almost like I’m artificially isolating myself from other people. I take a presupposition that the person I’m talking to couldn’t empathize/sympathize with me, so I won’t even try.
Again, the problem with this is I’ve closed off before anyone can even get the opportunity to open up, which becomes a feedback loop of my own, self-created negativity.
And I think this is a good thing to realize.
See, the problem that I found in the way I’ve been doing things is this: when I fail to open up and let people see things about me that I don’t typically share, when it does happen, I might, once again, unnaturally create a imbalanced relationship where I feel closer to someone than I actually should. Which, in some ways, can be just as unhealthy as isolating yourself.
The best analogy I think I could give is, say you haven’t ate properly for months for whatever reason. And say you had been deprived and hungry. Then, say you were to finally get into a situation where you can eat properly, and the first thing you eat is something that previously you didn’t really have an acquired taste to. But, because of the deprivation you had to food, suddenly the food you hadn’t liked prior to that starvation, you actually start to like. Then you ask yourself, do you really like the food, or were you just hungry? It doesn’t have an obvious answer…
This might be a bad example, but I feel as if it gets the point across enough.
And it’s not to say my friend is a bad person and/or someone I previously wouldn’t have associated with, because she’s actually such an amazing person, and probably one of the most genuine people I’ve met. But what I am trying to say is, I feel like I’ve moved from one unhealthy situation to possibly another (maybe not as bad) unhealthy situation.
But anyways, that’s all I have to say.
I’m sorry I haven’t posted as frequently as I usually do, and this is something I’m getting back into now. I still haven’t stopped reading though, just the books I’ve been reading haven’t really felt “post-worthy”. But I’ll be sure to write about some of the books I’ve been reading in the future. Just wait.
Thanks for reading,
cory
New Age Lessons 