Love is kind, love is sacrifice, love is...........those little cartoons had it right, its sooooooooooo hard to define. But I've decided to take another stab as we're all inclined to do so because we just want to get this love game down, am I right? I think its so hard because as a friend said me to recently, we just really don't listen to each other anymore. The art of dialogue, communication, and actually having patience for the other person's point of view is a waning past time. And as we talked what else I came to is that: there is a general lack of self-awareness that seems to be the heart of the problem to me.
There is this scene in the movie I Heart Huckabees, where one of the main characters keeps telling this same story about how we could sell anything to anybody. This story had become such an important backdrop for this character's identity that by the end of the film, he literally felt sick repeating the story. And during this time, his girlfriend was having an existential crisis. While in therapy, a question kept popping up again and again and again and it was: “How am I not myself?.” Pretty simple question, right? Pretty hard question to answer too.
When we lack self-awareness, we simply lose track of ourselves, our hopes, visions, and even our personal moral compass. Love is sooooooo hard to define now because I think on a general level many of us simply do not know ourselves. Sure we know other people; their tempers, their hobbies, their passions, their personalities and we must know these things if we're to navigate everyday relationships, but what we are also miss is knowing ourselves too. We may know what we like, what we prefer, but how many of us can say, “Self (insert name), despite my many shortcomings, I am a kick ass individual who knows exactly what they want of out life and how to get there.” Now..........say that sentence to yourself again and believe it with utter certainty and sincerity. Did you fail? Because I know I do all the time.
And this is precisely why love is so hard to understand, categorize and to practice with grace, respect, and loyalty. Self satisfaction coupled with the unhealthy mix of self loathing we carry for ourselves should constantly have us asking ourselves, “How am I not myself?”. We need to know when our behavior, our decisions, our predicaments are not our own, but others expectations and teasing that out is the best challenge, journey, and adventure a person could hope for. Love, to me, means self discovery and walking that path with other people who respect this journey just as much as you do. #loveisblind, #relationships, #journeysofselfdiscovery
Santee Blakey is a Life Coach and Licensed Massage Therapist at Soul Growth Wellness. When she's not biking, reading, or biking, or reading (she needs new hobbies, suggest her some:-), she'll be writing and enjoying a caramel frappacino in her favorite Starbucks. Follow her on Youtube for her series --> Self Acceptance: What It's Really Like (A Journey).
Comments