Great. Your girlfriend hates pickles and somehow you never knew that. Is that the worst thing in the entire world? No. It’s not, but also, it is. It feels that way for all the reasons I discussed yesterday. The topic that I want to focus on at some point is people changing and our response to such a metamorphosis. So why am I talking about not knowing things about people? What is the connection? Oh well, it’s huge. And if I’m being entirely accurate, there are two rather significant touch points.
First of all, the revealing of an unknown fact can be an indication that you don’t know someone as well as you thought you did, which can determinedly lead to the “changing” of a person. Obviously, this is a different kind of alteration because if we are real with ourselves, the person hasn’t changed, but our perception of them has. We see them anew. We are going to explore that thought a little more intensely, but I want to drop the second notion or connection on you first. So, number two: the ‘who the fuck is this person?’ can directly correlate to actual changes that person is exhibiting. It could be a sign of greater change to come or can be a red flag that changes have already happened and we haven’t been very clued into them thus far. Both.
For today, I want to circle around the first connection, the not knowing. The reason this bit is so challenging to contend with is because we often chastise ourselves when we encounter this understanding. I have. I do. I recently had a situation with three separate friends where they showed sides that “shocked” me. But they didn’t actually surprise me. Not really. What knocked me on my behind was how complacent I had become. I had allowed myself to feel safe with these people in a way that was careless. I was reckless with my sensitive and fragile heart.
I trusted that what I knew of them was all that there was to know. I believed that even if I saw traits that I found challenging or difficult, they would never be “turned” on me. Boo. Pure arrogance on my part. Shame on me. We can always choose to see certain parts of a human but 9.999 times out of 10, when a person is able to act a certain way towards others, they will turn it on us at some point. It is just a matter of time. If they are selfish, mean, careless, or vindictive, chances are that we will at some damn point do something that triggers that behavior in them. It might take ages and we might not get a full dosage, but we will have to face the beast at some point. That’s just the way that it works.
The part that is most troubling is when we run into parts of another person that we don’t care for, we tend to bury them deep in our psyche. We remove that information from our system so completely that it is as if we never knew it to begin with and when we are faced with it at some point, it feels shocking and dismaying in a way that indicates not knowing.
I am going to share a few little bits of knowledge from my experiences and I’m even going to throw some advice your way. You’ve heard some of these statements and suggestions from me before, but they are so important that I am absolutely 100% going to repeat them here.
The first thing we always have to do is forgive ourselves. I know that sounds ridiculous and maybe you are thinking that you always do or have or there has never been need for you to even consider such a thing. False. When we realize we didn’t know the whole of someone, we tend to turn a certain breed of wrath on ourselves. How stupid could we have been? How clueless? How wrapped up in that person’s charm or offerings were we that we just didn’t see what was right in front of our face? When we were faced with evidence of these things, why didn’t we decide to explore further at that time? Why did we need to be annihilated or why did we need to have things explore at the absolute worst time? Well, just because.
I know that isn’t a very satisfying answer but I’m afraid it is the truth. That is just the way that the universe works. There is sometimes a rhyme and reason and sometimes shit just happens as it does and we never get to understand why. I like to believe that there is something in the universe that is aligning, but honestly, who the fuck knows? Sometimes it just isn’t our time and we have to wait and then when things actually go down, we aren’t ready or we have 8 zillion other things weighing on our heart and mind and so, is it literally the WORST TIMING EVER.
The point is, we can’t control these things (for the most part, more on that later), so it doesn’t make any sense to beat ourselves up over it. And, as I just stated, there might not always be a clear ‘ta-da’ moment behind why things happen as they do, so we can’t point to that in order to let ourselves off the hook. We just have to do it. We didn’t see what was there or what wasn’t there, and that’s okay. Now we do see it and it is everything that happens after this point that counts. This is the time where we shine. We can pretend like we never saw it and continue on our merry way (been there, done that) or we can take it all in and take our next steps in a way that is measured and thoughtful and meaningful.
I vote for the latter, but this is mostly because I’ve been taken down by the former. My willing and willful negligence caused me and a good number of other folks a lot of pain. Mostly me though. In spades. So, I highly recommend you deal with your shit when it is placed in front of you. It hurts and it is incredibly difficult but in the long run, it is so much better than the alternative.
So, we forgive ourselves and then we face the music. I don’t recommend going on a black hole spin out, but I do suggest that you look deeper than surface. When you start to see inconsistency between who you thought you knew and who is in front of you, ask yourself if there are other gaps that exist. Again, this doesn’t mean a paranoid expedition into a maze. This simply means asking yourself whether the behavior is bigger than it appears. Is it just that you didn’t know your significant other prefers smooth peanut butter and finds crunchy disturbing or is it that they seem to just mirror image all of your likes when you are together? Do they just eat crunchy peanut butter because you do? Are they wildly in agreement because it is the path of least resistance, because it doesn’t really matter, or because you are being manipulated?
These are difficult questions with challenging answers, but you must begin to ask. I am not suggesting you should query with these exact notions, but rather you follow a similar format in exploring what that information in front of you really means.
Just ask. That’s all.
I may be here tomorrow or I might take my day off from my day job as a day of separation from everything. I hope you have a good Friday, a good weekend.
Stay safe and healthy. Give some thought to all the things.
Talk soon.
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 