One of the hardest people to know for most of us is ourselves. Any of us can wake up a morning staring in wonderment at the mirror, realizing they don't know anything about the person looking back at them. A familiar face attached to a familiar body of which we think we know everything that matters. Weight, flaws, weak points, allergies, sicknesses, when was the last time it had sex or masturbated, when brushed its teeth last time and when it washed its hair the last time. We may know things about the person looking at us from the mirror, like what does they do for a living, where they went to school and what was the class they liked the less or liked the most. But suddenly, we might star into those familiar eyes, scan that familiar face and realized we don't know anything that matters.
What do we really like, what do we really want, what are we really like. In a way it's ironic that the person we spend most time with is the person we know less of. Maybe the root of this comes from the crib, since we are taught from early age to watch others, follow others, pay attention to others, suppress ourselves and ge good to others, but little to no attention is ever turned to paying attention to ourselves. Others might spend time with us, and others may pay attention to us, but when do we pay attention to ourselves? We may spend time ON ourselves, but do we spend time WITH ourselves?
Think about it for a minute. You may bo shopping, and as you go through the clothes and shoes, the first thought you have is "would this look good on me?". Not that we want to look ugly, but how often do we see ourselves? Why isn't the first thought about clothes "how would this feel on me?". How many times do we really want to be pretty or sexy for ourselves? And, really, why on Earth do you need to be sexy for yourself? Sports clothing might be the first type of thing you buy actually thinking about yourself. Is this comfortable, can I move in this... though there's people who think first about how the new track suit is going to look on them... for others.
When you want to lose weight, what's the first though in your mind? Do you want to be slimmer because you want to be healthy, you want to be able to do sports easier, or you want to lose weight so you get admired by the people you are attracted to?
It goes almost unconsciously, and it leaks into every part of our life, and advertising is there to reinforce this attention towards the outside, the rest of the world, shutting up your connection with yourself.
This can happen to anyone, no matter how balanced or good we think our life is, if we have run into a point of stagnation, such as, when for instance you at one point in your life decide to make a large part of your life about one thing. Be it a hobby, a job, a person, a relationship, your family or family member, a fashion, a sport, a goal... when it ends or even when you hit the point when it stops being enough (or you get enough of it), you may find yourself facing a void, the life of a person you no longer know. One of the most typical cases happen when, after being involved in an intense, long relationship, we find ourselves adrift. What's our personality like, oustide the relationship? Who are we when we are no longer "this person's better half"? What do we like? What interests us?
In a relationship, certainly a lot of people tend to take over the tastes of their partner in order to enforce compatibility. Watch the same type of movies, read the same type of books, watch the same games or shows, learn to play the same kind of video games, get addicted to the same Internet stuff and share the rutines. But when the relationship is over, it becomes hard to untangle ourselves from the behavior patterns we have take on to atune to our former partner. Some people - both men and women - tend to absorbe entirely the personality of the other person, their habits and tastes included, in order to ensure that they have things in common. They like races if their partner likes them, watch nior films if their partner watches them, go to biker bars if their partner goes to them, or to bohéme cafés if that's what their partner likes to do.
The path to find yourself, is hard, but there are milestones where you can start: go back to the time before the relationship, or before you've got hooked up on whatever that absorbed your life so deeply. Re-read your old journals, dig out your old box of memories, your old drawings, your old letters, and get in touch with the person you used to be. It's a great moment to make the changes you'd like to do, and then pick up the thread and continue where you left it.
There are however, other cases harder to crack. People who have lived their whole life convinced that you are in this world to do as others tell you to do. People who studied what others told them to study, work where others told them to work, dress, talk and behave like others tell them to, and even like the things others told them to like. Curiously this sort of repressed type of behavior is seen as desirable by many. Dress sexy, and be interested in girly things, don't speak loud and never kiss in the first date. And if you let yourself loose? If you dress comfortable instead of sexy? If you like beer and boxing? Maybe you don't get 100 dates, or partners that last five years, with single periods that last two days in between, but you get to be you and won't wake up one day at 60 wondering who is that woman looking at you from the mirror, maybe wishing to have spent a whole weekend with her to find out if she likes the mountain or the beach better, if she'd rather hop on her car and drive far at any given chance, or rather stay home in her pyjamas, walking barefoot on the garden grass while kindling a hot cup of tea with a pile of DVD's to watch.
When you don't have an earlier milestone or point of being yourself to return, finding out who you are can be tricky. Knowing yourself takes time, specially because you have to learn to listen to yourself. Managing this is not a simple task, as you can't take yourself out for a coffee and talk about the matter. It takes time and a lot of tries - some easy, some difficult - to find yourself, your own voice among the whirpool of other voices planted in your head.
It take courage, it takes time, but above all, it takes perseveration, but it worths it. ^_^
No comments:
Post a Comment