Tag: self worth

  • Seeping Arrogance

    Seeping Arrogance

    No one simply decides to be arrogant, even though the obnoxious nature of some may convince us that such a deliberate decision was taken at some point. Arrogance is one of those under estimated traits that contaminate our character as we progress in our efforts for success in this life. The more correct answers we have for the struggles of others, or for that matter the assistance we are able to render to those less fortunate, or even the spirituality that we manage to garner in our efforts to be detached from worldliness, all lead us a step closer to growing pompous about our achievements or the value that we believe we add to the lives of others.

    Having anything to share is a step towards arrogance, especially if the motivation to share it is forgotten. I find myself grappling with what was once, in the not too distant past, easy concepts and principles to apply in my life. Being patient with those less grounded, or having a kind word to follow some tough love used to be easy. But this year has seen all that and more being taken for granted as I found myself immersed regularly into situations where my willingness to contribute was being abused, and my due rewards were being dismissed or denied. Rewards are not always material in nature. Sometimes it can be as simple as seeing our contribution appreciated, implemented, or shared further. Our egos require such fickle affirmation otherwise it becomes that much more difficult to subdue. 

    At some point, it becomes easy, and understandably so, to justify why endless sacrifice is not a worthy strategy to bring about the change we wish to see around us. A touch of arrogance, or perhaps narcissism is needed to maintain a balance of sanity. That touch relates to the belief that we indeed have something of value to share. Some could argue that this is confidence and generosity of spirit, rather than arrogance, but if we consider that such a notion is based on how we perceive our self worth, then I could easily counter argue that it is a belief that we have regarding our skill or attribute being superior to that of another. Arrogance follows very closely behind such a belief. The difficulty lies in recognising what value we are capable of contributing so that we give back to the society from which we took, versus assuming that the level of success we achieved was exclusively a result of our own efforts. Dismissing both and believing that we have nothing of value to contribute is an exercise in ingratitude, and an unhealthy ego, which in this context would be the antithesis of arrogance but equally destructive. And of course is the leading cause of depression and anxiety. 

    If I look at someone and wish that they were more like me because I think that I’ve achieved something noble or impressive that others will admire, then I’m simply feeding my ego by seeking opportunity to validate the value that I have placed on my own achievements. The more grateful recipients I find for my contributions, the more superior my contribution can be perceived, by others and myself.

    However, the fact that arrogance is largely a perceived trait rather than a practiced one adds its own complexity to the debate. As just one example, I can’t count the number of times when I was perceived and accused of being arrogant simply because I chose to actively resist common wisdom. For me, it was an attempt at convincing others to reconsider something that I believed was flawed even though they believed that it was a widely accepted truth. I felt a need to resist the common thinking because accepting it would not only compromise my principles about not following blindly, but also my desire to improve on almost anything and everything that I encounter. Of course to them, I was simply being argumentative because they assumed that my motivation for such a challenge was driven by a need to be right, or a need to be different.

    This makes me wonder if arrogance is ever truly arrogance in intent, or is it in fact a reflection of the arrogant nature of the one observing the so-called grand behavior? I’ve previously stated that arrogance is a defence mechanism. It’s a tool employed to distract attention away from a weakness or vulnerability, or to demand significance when we feel threatened. But within the context of this discussion, it’s that weakness it vulnerability on the part of the ones passing the judgement of arrogance, or on the part of the one perceived as being arrogant? I’m inclined to believe that it is the former.

    Perhaps arrogance is never one sided? Perhaps it only comes into play when the observer refuses to look beyond the obvious in order to understand what is driving the apparently arrogant behaviour so that we first seek to understand before we judge, rather than assuming that we’re better without even trying? 

  • To Breathe Again

    To Breathe Again

    There are few things more exhausting than the plague of insincerity from those that find a constant need to explain their drama and their dreams under the pretense of seeking sincere advice to overcome their hurdles. 

    Soliciting advice while professing not to have the answers ourselves, then discarding that advice in favour of taking the easy way out reflects the deficit of conviction in our soul. 

    A deficit of conviction leads to an empty existence, embellished with an outward show of struggles, while concealing an inward turmoil of loneliness as we go through life seeking associations with others that may define who we are. 

    Loneliness is more burdensome when we lack affection for who we are. 

    Lacking affection for who we are results from a lack of courage to live with conviction because we believe that our worth is defined by the acceptance of others before it is defined by our acceptance of ourselves. 

    Accepting ourselves demands that we take a brutally honest view of who we are and what we stand for, but our timid souls protect us from such realities and turn us into victims. 

    As victims, we require a support structure that recognises our weaknesses as battle scars, while ignoring our contribution towards growing so apparently weak. 

    Our contribution towards our weakness, or our impotent state, demands a sense of accountability for the decisions we took and the choices we made. 

    Accountability becomes unnecessary when we’re protected from the reality of it by those that seek to comfort us in moments of weakness while they seek such comfort as well. 

    Seeking commonality in weakness and then building a support structure to celebrate the triumph of existing in spite of such weakness is a fool’s profession of courage to the world. 

    Victims are emboldened in their need to hold others accountable for their (victim’s) choices when the support structure that they subscribe to is formed by equally celebrated victims. 

    Celebrating the weaknesses of others as a statement of courage denies them the motivation needed to emerge from the state of weakness. 

    When our state of weakness defines our significance to those around us, and in turn solicits the affection and care that we desire, we will fight with a blinding rage against anyone that threatens the reality that we’ve created for ourselves. 

    A sobering moment at an unexpected intersection in our lives is all that is needed to shatter the alternate reality that we clung to for so long. 

    A shattered reality forces us to reinvent ourselves in the face of adversity. 

    Forced reinvention in the face of adversity is considerably more challenging than reinvention from introspection. 

    In the absence of courage to reinvent ourselves, we will seek out new avenues to play the old script of pity that is needed for a battle weary soldier. 

    Pity begets pity, and the slide into self loathing will gain momentum. 

    Self loathing constricts our ability to prevail in the absence of a support structure that celebrates our weaknesses, leaving us with the tough decision to either prevail, or willingly fail. 

    The choice we make at this point will either see us emerge from that constricted space and embrace the reality of who we are capable of being, or see us resign ourselves to a scrap heap of souls that found it easier to blame the world for their misery than to live with conviction. 

    If we choose the former, we’ll suddenly breathe deeper and realise that we were simply gasping for air until the arrival of this new reality that we chose to embrace. 

    If we choose the latter, our chests will continue to constrict, until eventually we will suffocate on the bile of the self loathing that we nurtured for so long while waiting for sympathy to make us feel whole. 

    To breathe, rather than gasp, we must live with conviction, and have the courage to see ourselves for who we are and not how others perceive us to be. 

    We always show our best side to society, and hide the worst for the quiet moments of torment that is rarely shared with others. In those quiet moments, we either learn to love ourselves, or loathe ourselves, and the choices of others has no bearing on those moments whatsoever. 

  • The Other Side Of Arrogance

    The Other Side Of Arrogance

    This is the story of assumptions. Assumptions that we make about prickly characters and their tender counterparts. Assumptions we make about the motivation of people to act the way that they do, without realising that those assumptions are projections of how we believe we would act if faced with their circumstances, and then we judge them for it while cursing those that judge us under similar circumstances. 

    Facebook is a social experiment for many, including its investors. More importantly, I experiment with it by occasionally mixing in populist sentiment with principled viewpoints that I know will make many people awkward or even infuriated. And every single time, it proves true that people only polarise towards those that make them feel good about themselves, and rarely towards those that force them to think critically. Everyone wants to have their struggle recognised, but no one wants to emerge independently from their struggles because most often, their struggles grow to define their significance. The arrogance that is reflected in this approach is not one that most would relate to because we assume by default that arrogance is only an attribute of those that live selfishly, abruptly, or obnoxiously. Most are incapable of separating arrogance from passion or conviction, much to their own detriment. 
    Those that appear meek or subdued are often considered humble or downtrodden because of their apparently pitiful state, but there is an arrogance that runs deep in them as well. That arrogance is based on the belief that their state is so grave or overwhelming, that they should be celebrated for persevering, and they deserve all the compassion and assistance that their circumstance calls for. However, we’re too often so focused on the circumstance that we fail to consider their contribution towards enabling or causing their circumstance to arise. 

    The arrogance sets in when we assume that we simply cannot be responsible for our woes. The unpleasant experiences of life must have been imposed on our soft and kind nature by other arrogant or selfish ones, and therefore we are the victims of their oppression long after they departed from our lives and left us with enough opportunity to choose differently. That arrogance is the belief that life owes us more, as if life is independent of our choices and our efforts to improve our state. 

    The other side of arrogance emerges when we feel entitled to compassion, or we demand indulgence because we need an age old account to be settled before we let go of what’s holding us back. The other side of arrogance shows its ugly face when we define ourselves as damaged because we think someone else damaged us, while not realising that we subscribe willingly to being damaged and then abdicate responsibility for such a heinous choice. 

    Arrogance is not the absence of humility. Instead, arrogance is the assumption of humility, and similarly, it is the assumption of feeling entitled to a kindness that is not yours to demand or expect. The moment you impose your expectations on others, regardless of how justified it may be, before you are willing to let go of a sour experience, you become arrogant, because what should be an act of conviction now becomes a transaction of emotional blackmail. 

    Sadly, too many don’t realise this, and continue to live in self-constructed prisons while blaming the world for being cruel. 

  • Resilience is not cheap 

    I’ve watched some emerge stronger from harrowing ordeals, while others crumble from comparatively minor setbacks. This made me wonder what it is that makes some resilient while others remain fragile? Sometimes it’s the final straw that makes us appear weak when we crumble from a seemingly petty incident, while others have no insight into how many straws we carried on our backs up to that point. Yet at other times it is something that surprises even us when we find ourselves bewildered by the ferocity of a trial that strikes from a quarter from which we least expected. 
    Seeing something coming a mile off, or not expecting much from someone that eventually disappoints us has little impact to our composure. It takes a lot more of those anticipated occurrences to wear us down, as opposed to a single blow from someone we trust deeply. Our apparent resilience is therefore not something that is fixed or easily predictable, but rather it is relative to what we hold dear, or what we’re willing to do without. That suggests that what we tolerate is a deeply personal choice, some of which we’re aware of consciously, but most of which is shaped quite unconsciously throughout our lives. 

    Importantly though, we can’t assume that everyone is, or should be equally resilient, or that our tolerance to bear burdens or trials is equal. It’s not. We define our tolerance levels long before we reach it, and it is that tolerance level that often defines our resilience. On the other hand, our capacity to deal with troubling life events is largely the same. What we allow to consume that capacity versus what we let go of is what determines our resilience. Those choices are not so easy to make. Most often, that elusive state of mindfulness ensures that in the absence of mindfulness, we barely realise that we’re making such huge choices to begin with. 

    I always picture it as a wheel barrow that we push through life. As we go along, we pack in our troubles. As those troubles pass, we offload them from that wheel barrow and make space for new growth events. Sometimes we even allocate specific areas in the wheel barrow for different types of life events. When that specific area starts filling up, we grow anxious because it threatens to take up spaces that we set aside for other important life events. And in that way, challenges in one part of our life ends up threatening experiences in other parts of our lives. In such circumstances, we may find we lose patience in one area, like work, while we’re completely composed in another area, like a relationship with a significant other. When we don’t create those unique spaces, we find that one area of our life will more easily contaminate the quality of a totally and often unrelated other area of our life. Add to this the fact that many of us don’t ever offload those events because the events themselves have grown to define the state of our being, and you quickly see how easily it is that we sabotage our ability to carry our burdens through life in that little wheel barrow we were each given. That’s when that wheel barrow fills up until it either gives in under all that weight, or we lack the strength to push it any further. That is what determines our capacity to deal with new experiences. The more we hold on to the past, the less capacity we have to embrace the present. The less capacity we have, the lower our resilience to deal with what comes our way. 

    Before we can choose what we hold on to versus what we let go of, we need to know what we want. Sometimes we know what we want, but we don’t articulate it well enough to ourselves, so we go chasing after something we don’t really want, and then find ourselves devastated when we acquire it only to find that it is not what we were looking for to begin with. It sounds cryptic, but no more cryptic than how many of us live our lives. 

    Our ability to face adversity, smile, maintain our composure and move on is determined long before that adversity strikes. It is determined in those moments when we hold on to a bad memory and promise ourselves never to forgive or forget, or it is determined by those moments when we shrug, smile, accept what we could not change, and move on with the knowledge we gained from the experience. 

    Very simplistically, I see resilience as a sense of conviction driven from a deeply held desire to serve a greater purpose, which outweighs our need to exact retribution for a past event. But that begs the question at to what is purpose? Purpose must be greater than a selfish benefit. It has to benefit others as well. If it only benefits us, it’s not true purpose, it is more likely convenience or indulgence. Purpose becomes important for resilience because it is all that stands between us and the distractions that prevent us from reaching our goals. In fact, if your goal is not aligned with a specific purpose, it is more likely to have a fleeting effect on your happiness, rather than a lasting one. Goals without purpose tend to be instant gratification. Instant gratification doesn’t require conviction. It merely requires a short term satisfaction of a fleeting need. Such needs are usually instinctive and spontaneous, and feed an emotional state, not necessarily a spiritual one. 

    The expense associated with resilience is therefore the resolve we need to establish to let go of that which no longer serves our greater purpose. We choose those greater purposes that we wish to serve based on what we believe we are most capable of influencing as a beneficial outcome to those around us. The lower our self esteem, the less likely we are to be convinced of our ability to contribute in this regard. But before you feel pity for the one with the self esteem deficit, consider what it is that they are choosing to keep in their wheel barrows, as opposed to showing gratitude for the opportunities they have, and the growth they experienced? 

    Resilience is not cheap because it demands a level of conviction in who we are before anyone else is willing to invest in us. It demands that we recognise our abilities and take accountability for our contributions towards our lives, rather than pretending to be victims of circumstance or fate. Resilience dictates that we take charge, that we lead, that we own our space before it gets owned by others. When we give in and assume that life happens regardless of our input, or that we need saving before we feel significant, it confirms that we’re ungrateful for what we have. It also confirms that we choose not to learn from our mistakes nor accept accountability for our contributions to what weighs us down. When we get into that state, that victim mentality, we become a burden to others, a major deficit to society, and we test the resilience of those that have to pick up the slack because they see the value beyond the trials we placed in their paths instead of stopping and questioning why it is that they need to deal with what the fickle and ungrateful refuse to own. 

    Resilience is not cheap because anything in short supply is expensive to attain. The demand for resilience on those that live with conviction increases disproportionately with every wimp that cowers in the face of adversity. 

    [An incomplete thought process] 

  • Firefighter Syndrome

    I’ve heard this term firefighter syndrome used loosely over the years, most often referring to people that have a tendency to want to rush in and fix things without thinking it through. Not suggesting that firefighters don’t think things through, but I’m sure you get the picture. You know, like the saying that if all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail? Similarly if everything you see looks like a fire then rushing in to put it out seems like the sensible thing to do. In fact, it almost seems like an inspired calling in life. 

    My experience with this mentality has been somewhat different though. For me, the fire represents an opportunity to be significant and the firefighter represents the one that seeks significance in a crisis situation. It reminds me of an incident a good few years ago in Cape Town. The famed fynbos on Table Mountain and surrounding areas had caught alight due to the recklessness of a smoker (no pun, just the truth) during the dry season.  Their carelessly discarded stompie (a.k.a. cigarette butt) caused the fire to burn out of control for weeks, killing off acres and acres of fynbos and forests. A subsequent investigation revealed that the government agency responsible for managing forest fires in that area had routinely dowsed the flames from fires that started up over the years. Those smaller fires would have resulted in a natural culling of the density of growth,  but by preventing it from self regulating, they created a perfect setting for a perfect brush fire. As a result, when the mother of all fires started, the rate with which it spread was beyond any expectations, and it burned out of control without anyone being able to contain it.

    Too often we convince ourselves that it’s a selfless act to sacrifice our own comforts and well being to alleviate the discomfort or struggles of another. Sometimes that may be true, but most often, it’s not. Most often it is simply a form of escapism from our own lives. It’s easier to feel significant and celebrated when we contribute towards the upliftment of others, than it is to resolve some of the challenges that we are faced with. By focusing on the fires of others we achieve two key objectives. Firstly, we have a seemingly legitimate reason not to reflect on our own problems because of the constant busyness associated with being there for everyone else, and secondly, we provide a very meaningful distraction for them to avoid any opportunity to focus on us. Or more importantly, allowing them to see the mess of gaping holes in our lives. 

    Yes, there is merit in indulging in the upliftment of others, provided such indulgence is not an escape or deprivation of what we need for ourselves to be whole. Also, its merit only remains credible as long as we are convinced that the whole of us is not of more value to the world than the assistance that we offer others. This is especially true when we find that their cries for help are usually not much more than a variation of our own self defeating behaviours. While busying ourselves with helping others provides us with the distraction needed as described earlier, for some, reaching out for help to lift themselves out of their challenged state is their way of getting the affirmation needed to justify their weakness. 

    Consider it from this perspective. The one that is knocked over and finds that their dignity has taken an equal beating as their ego, will find that the shortest path back to a dignified state is found in obtaining the recognition from others that being overwhelmed under such circumstances is entirely understandable. It’s a vicious cycle of sympathy. The one recognises and relates to the weakness of the other because they would desire such sympathy and understanding if they were in a similar position, and the weakened one saves face by appearing downtrodden and therefore oppressed by the circumstances they find themselves in which appeals to our compassion for long enough to distract us from questioning the choices made by the victim that landed them in that state to begin with.  

    How does this relate to the firemen syndrome? I think it encourages a shared weakness in society that supports the abdication of responsibility for our contribution to the straitened circumstances we may find ourselves in. It also encourages the mentality of victimhood. That belief that we’re only strong if we have someone from whom to draw strength when we lack purpose or meaning in our lives. I think that is exactly what it all boils down to. When we lose sight of the value we wish to contribute to this world, or worse, when we lack such convictions to begin with, we look for opportunity to draw on the energies of others in ways to sustain our fragile ego without admitting such fragility. 

    Like the self regulating brush fire, if we constantly protect others from themselves by helping them up when they are entirely capable of standing up by themselves, eventually they will find no use for their own legs or their backbone, and we’ll find ourselves overwhelmed with the burden of having to maintain their fragility because of the unwavering support we provided that protected them from having to grow up. 

    Sometimes the greatest help we can offer is a clear view of reality, not a shelter from it. The more we invest in protecting others from reality, the more we limit our capacity to improve our own. Before you think this is a selfish way to live, consider who is more dependable in times of genuine need. The one who was protected from becoming a fully formed adult, or the one that has grown stronger and independent from the knocks that life has dealt? 

  • Genetic Convenience

    Some are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, while others apparently land with their bum in the butter. But neither promises a good life if you don’t know what to do with good fortune. On the other hand, some say that good things happen to those who wait, but I know that those who wait usually get left behind. Striking a balance is only easy if we know what balance we’re pursuing.

    Fate, as some would like to believe, deals us a hand that we cannot change. Those that have a healthier view of fate are usually not as ill-fated as those who surrender to the outcomes of the choices of others. And so it is with the silver spoon brigade and all the rest that have access to privileges that they did not earn, but inherited instead.

    But what does that mean for those that didn’t inherit such privilege? In fact, is such an inheritance a privilege or a burden? I guess it all depends on how well we know ourselves. And that’s part of the problem of a bountiful inheritance. It provides us with enough to avoid having to look deeper. It raises expectations of entitlement while distracting us from the reality of the privilege that we assume to be rights. We forget, inheritance or not, that rights cannot be bought, only privileges can.

    But that’s a side issue. The real issue goes beyond privilege and inheritance. The real issue cuts much closer to the bone. There’s a popular Afrikaans saying that (roughly translated) means that some people are made and then just left that way. And that is how many people live their lives. It’s so easy to blame our upbringing and our genes for how we turned out in life that you’d swear our power of rational thought and limited free will doesn’t exist.

    When I see someone behaving offensively and others excusing it by saying that that is just their way, I see the hypocrisy oozing out of their pores as they excuse behaviour in some that they would never tolerate in others. Worse still, I see the hypocrisy of crying foul at a degrading social standard that robs us all of our dignity, while we complacently condone the rot in our own circles that directly feeds that degraded state that we hate.

    You’d swear that everyone needs to be hit on the head by a falling apple before they understand the simple logic of cause and effect. If I bribe a cop, I shouldn’t complain when the president steals the wealth of the country for self-enrichment. Similarly, if I overlook the transgressions of those around me, or even my own, and I justify it with flimsy excuses, I should wait patiently for the wheel to turn, because it always does. However, we forget that the same wheel travels through the muck and mire of society and gathers excess as it does, so that by the time it revisits our little corners of delusion, it has a payload equal to the effect of our actions, not the effort of it. In other words, to state it plainly, shit rolls downhill with a snowball effect.

    Justice and harmony is not established in society by an eye for an eye, because the eye of a surgeon is significantly more valuable than that of a labourer. The eye of a surgeon for the hand of a labourer is closer to any concept of justice we may contemplate. And all of this comes back to one simple point. When we go through life feeling entitled because we serve our base desires before we consider the impact of our actions, we shouldn’t complain about the hollow feeling that visits us in those quiet moments when it’s just us, our conscience, and a failing body to keep us company.

    We reap what we sow. Simple logic. But not so simple that we get what we give. We don’t. Because this world, as ruled by man, only provides respite and a hint of harmony. Justice is not possible because most don’t appreciate the true gravity of it. Genetic inheritance is what shapes our character in our childhood, but living consciously is what shapes our being when we’re adults. Unfortunately, too many only outgrow their growing pains, but rarely outgrow their childish brains.

  • No More Than Me

    The above thought has morphed in meaning for me over recent months. I used to think of it within the context of kids with prince or princess syndrome and recall how we were never raised to consider ourselves to be anything more than we were. We were always smacked in line when we got ahead of ourselves, and we were always reminded that we weren’t the most important people in the world either. Sometimes that felt grounding, and at times it felt as if something was lacking from my childhood. But neither one of those inclinations of interpretation defined me. It simply was a truth of my life that I reflected on from time to time.

    More recently, I find myself veering towards seeing it as a validation of my contribution. It reminds me that all I am capable of giving is all I will ever be capable of giving, and in reflecting on this more deeply, it seems to be a definition that can easily ground me. Of course, the nagging danger of complacency rings true with it as well, which means that its definition of me remains qualified and not absolute.

    Strolling through the surf today, I was visited with a familiar feeling that I experienced too seldom in my life. It was that feeling I got on occasions when I felt like I was truly taking care of me. While I’ve seen the need to serve others as being a legitimate calling of mine in life, I have become acutely aware at times of my neglect of my own needs in the process. Not in a self indulgent way, but simply taking care of the vessel that I leverage in my desire to serve. I remember one winter afternoon many years ago, I walked some distance from my car and felt the icy highveld wind of Johannesburg stinging my cheeks. I wore a knitted polar neck jersey, and a comfortably padded jacket. It felt as if it hugged me and for a very fleeting moment, I felt taken care of. It was a strange sensation then, and an even stranger realisation now. But it was a simple fleeting moment like that that made me aware of the type of care that I deserved from myself for myself.

    Due consideration and reasonable investment. Not over indulgence or extravagance. The former defines the value I place on myself while the latter defines the value I place on myself over others. It was a fine line that I’ve seen too many cross, and my revulsion at their behaviour always taunted me when I even approached that limit. How I see myself is most likely a distant cry from the way others see me. Their reflections of me only hold sway if their credibility commands respect. Like me, the credibility of most comes into question, especially when viewed through ill-informed lenses.

    Knowing this to be true, I dwell very little on how others see me. I acknowledge their right to an opinion, and the need to express that opinion, but if it stops at being an opinion without substance, it stops being important to me even before they’ve completed expressing it.

    No more than me. That idea dictates that in knowing the truth of it, I need to know the truth of me. It will anyways be an incomplete truth, but like it is with life, all endeavors for perfection will remain incomplete. However, just because the goal itself cannot be fully attained does not mean that there is no merit in its pursuit. And so I continue the journey of discovering me, while being careful not to over indulge or under invest in the process.

  • Soul Mates

    That dreamy look you get when someone walks into the room can mean only one thing. Your soul mate has arrived. The way they smile, the way they shift their gaze down and left with that reflective look before they answer, or the way they throw their head back when they let out a hearty laugh leaves you weak at the knees. Carefully caressing every movement of theirs with your gaze, their sigh becomes your sigh and their embrace becomes your completion.

    Such deep surrender can only be possible with a soul mate. It cannot be explained any other way, right? Of course it can, but in that moment of desire, logic escapes us and the loins take over where love pretends to play. But it’s not a singular desire that drives us to lose sight of reality and suddenly abandon our faculties in favour of love, sweet love. That would be far too simple a neanderthal response to explain why such sophisticated beings as ourselves suddenly drool with desire when the brain fog sets it.

    We go through life savouring successes, even tiny ones, bravely rising from each setback that befalls us. With each rising we muster a portion of renewed hope, a smattering of new wisdom, and a lowly regret that we tuck away neatly because it doesn’t quite complete the picture that we now present to the world. That’s the image of composed resilience that won’t be stifled. It would be fantastic if that cycle came around only once, but it doesn’t. It comes around more often than we’d care to remember, or even less than we’d care to admit. And so with each cycle we grow weary, but continue to exude hope and optimism, because all the fairy tales in the world cannot be wrong. My soul mate cometh, and I shall be ready and waiting to meet her at the door before the threshold, so that we can trundle in together, or not.

    The reality is closer to the truth of us spending our lives seeking avenues of expression so that we may be able to reveal ourselves to the world without feeling vulnerable in the process. Striking that balance leads to a tiresome combination of restraint and expression, until one of the two become more dominant. That dominant disposition shapes our character to the world around us, eventually convincing even us that it is who we are, until that fateful moment when that soul mate enters. That soul mate comes in the form of one who expresses what we restrain, and restrains what we express, thereby striking a cord with a desire buried so deep that just teasing it leaves us giggling like lovesick teens who just witnessed the de-flowering of the world.

    That completeness awakens us to the optimism and passion we once held dear, and with seeming abandon, we expose ourselves willingly in preparation for the embrace we yearned for since forever. Suddenly we wish to express to the world on their behalf what they restrain, trusting foolishly that they will express to the world what we restrain, and from between our loins shall spawn the perfectly balanced beauty of the sum of us.

    Whether they are soul mates or not is almost entirely irrelevant, or at best, subject to interpretation. We selectively interpret life, and love, and then follow it with deliberate action that either proves our views to be true, or abandons the world for being untrue. It is what we choose it to be, but such choices have to be mutual if the outcome is to be idyllic. Sometimes we meet one whose choices are inversely mutual, thereby syncing perfectly with our own, but sometimes what appears to be an initial sync turns out to be a novelty phase of fascination and not much more. When that phase passes, some will convince us that soul mates are not always intended to stay forever, while others will suggest that they weren’t ours to begin with. Either way, the outcome remains true, and the lessons we take will either build us up, or break us down.

    The amazing thing is, whether we’re right or wrong is not really what matters. That’s just bonus points. How we appreciate and grow from whatever or whoever comes our way is what peppers life beautifully, or taints it horribly. Much of life is wasted waiting for opportune moments or validation. Soul mates will be drawn towards us as kindred spirits when we live authentically and pause only for air to fill our lungs before we push on again. But authenticity is not easy to express, because we’re raised to find affection and validation as markers that determine our success. No wonder, in a world of emotionally stinted half formed adults, we wait for our soul mates to join us before we immerse ourselves fully in what is always only ever a one time offer.

    Life doesn’t wait for soul mates, nor should you.