Choosing Love in a Woke World of Self-centeredness
On Monday, I gave one of my best hugs to a friend I hadn’t seen in a while because we’d had a misunderstanding and things had gotten somewhat awkward between us. When she walked up to me and tapped me on the shoulder, I spun around surprised and pulled her into a tight hug and she held on. It was a gesture that said everything: I love you, I don’t want us fighting and thank you for coming to find me. I know it must have certainly been harder for her walking towards me not knowing how I’d react; she told me she had stood there for a while, unsure if to make the first move. I would have felt the same way if I were in her shoes and yet I’m so glad she was brave enough to reach out.The latter part of this year for me has actually been one filled with the mess in relationships and the courage to communicate with each other and speak, with love, about how things actually made us feel. And it’s been a rough ride especially having people openly declare that they’re done, with you, with the friendship. Mind you, these are not toxic relationships as one would have it. These are not destructive and unhealthy patterns sucking the life out of us. These are common mishaps that exist in any relationship, common battles we encounter when we choose to love people and do life with them. And yet nobody wants to fight and what I’m starting to realize is that more often than not, we have pretty good reasons why we’re giving up too. And each justification, I’m finding, is deeply rooted in the sense of self and in a culture that promotes the self at the expense of everything else, it’s pretty easy to get away with it.It’s increasingly becoming easier to treat the people in our lives as objects. The moment we don’t deem them as functional enough, as beneficial enough, we have not much use of them. If they hurt us, they must certainly be cut off. If they act in ways contrary to how we expect or would prefer, they must go. We’ve run out of grace. There’s no longer the urge to impress hope upon our hearts and I can understand why that is the case. It’s because we have been hurt, bruised. We have been lied to, made a fool of, we’ve been so broken by their presence in their lives that the best way to heal is in their absence. We have no trust. We are tired of their habits. We are sick of their tendencies. It’s us against a world which doesn’t necessarily meet our needs, a world which keeps taking from us and we’re frustrated and unsure what to do with all the mess and so we walk away. And for most part of my life, that’s what I’ve done- cut people off like they were a piece of fabric that didn’t match and went on with my life.I have a similar blog post about this but I’ve been so overwhelmed by the subject I had to write this post, perhaps more for myself than for anyone else. It’s a pretty messy world out there and we tend to miss the unsparing truth about our lives and others because we’re only looking at ourselves. I hope to live a life with the capacity that imbues me with sensitivity. That tenderness will flourish inside of me. That above all flaws, all chaos and disorder, love will prevail. That for all my life I’ll be the one showing up, even while afraid and wanting to fix what has been broken. We’ve inherited ideas about almost everything and we no longer question what we’re becoming, how numb we’re making our hearts. Truth is, I know nothing about fighting for people. I am the worst when it comes to staying. But what I do know is how flawed and impatient I am, how I choose the easier option of walking away. And I’ve been lucky to have a glimpse of someone look outside of themselves and choose me regardless of my darkness and my, do I want to be able to extend that to others.
Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion – Daniel Goleman
