Readjusting The Focus

Today I realised I didn't really know how people and life worked. I thought I did, with my expertise and experiences under my belt. But I don't actually. I have made the present into a very complex image based on the past and it didn't turn out as simple and easy to interpret as I thought it would be. So I got some advice from some good friends, about living life and breathing. They told me to take it easy, to chill out, to not think everything means something. We give meaning to things, I should know that, and now I recognise it because I see that this is what I have been doing. I am the one that places value on Facebook, on clothing, on imagery, on things said and unsaid. I am the one that allows doubts to be placed in my mind about the most trivial of things. I decide what's in and what's not. The basis that I have been making these sorts of decisions on is experience. Things I learned in high school don't apply as rigidly to life in general. For example, friendship in high school taught me that friends were around all the time and the ones that you stuck with in the cluster/clique were the ones you would leave with and that would be happiness. The world is not high school. There is a much much wider variety of forms and people out here, and that certainly adds a touch of flavour to this great moment we call life. I have learned that I have put my faith in the images I have of people instead of the people themselves. Mistake made, lesson learned. People are more than just what you see, and the surface isn't just a cloud of irrelevance. Faces, particularly eyes, lips, cheeks and teeth, are used to make connections. I've gone for the quick version of getting to know some people, straight to where I thought was the heart but was instead just a piece of paper with a heart drawn on it. People have to let you in. And I admit, there is a sense of urgency that makes my own search for people seem desperate. I recognise that and am willing to change my gears and my approach.

In the back of my mind, there used to be a voice that was saying how I was manipulating everyone, that I was a controlling bitch, because I was able to make friends by building them up instead of breaking them down. That voice never got loud until this year when making friends suddenly became obligatory and more unconsciously feared and now I thought there had to be a process involved. That was a mistake, listening to the voice. Manipulation comes from a lack of security, a fear that people acting autonomously would mean my demise. Now I know that not to be true - manipulation causes people to stop understanding you and forces them to interact with a projected image of yourself, of someone better, of someone you think they need. And this is how it complicates things, because then the friends you are trying to make no longer comprehend how your world functions. Mine didn't. I was torn between manipulation/seeking attention and authenticity, an imbalance which is poisonous to relationships because it injects confusion and blurriness, and what we see then is not what we get and the complexity suddenly becomes very foreign.

Life is simple. I see now that I looked at people and discerned what their problems are and somehow made that part of who they were in my mind, thereby somehow giving me a way into their hearts if I could repair the damage. But this is a misperception. If you only see the problems in people, you stop seeing people and see problems instead. And how can you befriend problems? People carry problems with them, but as a person who understands that they carry them, I realise that what they carry is simply their past, which is no longer here, so they are in reality carrying nothing.

The aforementioned friends made me realise this because they were looking at me as a person, as a friend, not as somebody with a perception problem. And I awoke. I was making them into what they were not. The removal of my filter made me see that I had made a big error. I was seeing broken people, but people are not broken.

So I thank you for the lesson :)

I think the following reiterates it well. It came to me in the library while I was taking a break from studying for exams.

"I want you to know that in each of us there is a light, a light so bright that it penetrates through our grievances, our guilt and our mistakes. It radiates from within our soul, so this light keeps us always warm, always at home in its peace. And whenever we are lost, it is only because we stop seeing it when we close our eyes. But it never ceases to shine, and neither do we, for we are that light."