What to knit your life with?

Have you ever felt drained sitting next to a person while some just refreshes you?

Life is simple ; each individual is unique, no two can be the same . A logical question should be “Why are we called social animals then?”

It’s the connections we have with individuals at various levels. We humans have social needs which are fulfilled by these connections. But the million dollar question is could you fill all these places with any random person? To answer this  I have to ask you one thing, could you put any piece to a puzzle and make a sane picture?

There is a  click with some people and it has nothing to do with how similar you are . You connect  with someone and find that person fulfilling a certain social need of yours making you more contended and happy but that doesn’t mean he/she is the only one for all your needs. This person is just a part of a whole huge picture which is made of many such connections. You connect with someone as a friend, someone else on an intellectual level while someone looks after the call of your heart and so on. 

But there is also a major unsaid pressure from the society on us to form these connections. It is not necessary that at the beginning of our journey we would find the exact piece to fit in the puzzle of our life but when we see or assume these pieces fitting in other people’s life we force to fake these bonds. Our hunger for social satisfaction also forces us to make hurried decisions. We make friends with whom we aren’t comfortable, we become close to people with whom we have few/no things to celebrate about.

This pressure is on both introverts & extroverts. As an introvert, you are pushed to be with people, even if it drains you and you aren’t comfortable with them. You are refused to wait for beautiful connections to happen which makes you enjoy your solitude more and more. While an extrovert, due to his compulsion to be around people, finds lots of them but end up feeling still lonely most of the time.

This in place of making us more contended, takes away the zeal out of our life. The human threads which are supposed to support us actually burdens us. We forget our individuality and instead of growing start carrying baggages. Sometimes we find the bonds which make us stronger but lose them with time and in search of the same kind of support find people who are not our match.

If we are in such a kind of relationship, are we doing justice to it and the other person/s involved in it. I am sure he/she is tolerating us the same way, we are tolerating them in our lives. This whole arrangement is unhealthy. The beauty of relationships and human connection is lost. Wake up before it’s too late and you become responsible for either hurting someone or ruining your experience as a result. Wait for the right piece for your puzzle and trust me it is worth waiting!

Enjoy your solitude and grab opportunities to connect with people with similar thought processes or for that matter someone with whom you can just have FUN! Never rush yourself, everything has a time. When we are waiting we feel that it is never going to end, this makes us impatient resulting in bad choices. But, that doesn’t mean that when something/ somebody does make sense, you still wait for the perfect one ( we all know no one/ nothing is  perfect). 

Life is all about trials & errors. Start living and exploring new human connections, even if it is not going to be your life altering relationship, it sure will teach you some new things.

“We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.”
― Albert Schweitzer

When Sincerity Stings

 

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. – Oscar Wilde

I was forced to actually be empathetic towards a sincere close one today. This empathy was forced because it actually overlapped with sympathy. If you are confused by the way I am using this great attribute of sincerity, let me tell you how difficult it is for a sincere person to lead a happy and contended life.

You must have heard about what is inside affects the outside. In other words, your inner self reflects on the outer world. You take the whole world the same way you are. So, it is not a shocker when a sincere person expects the same kind of treatment from the whole world.  Though their experiences have tried to wake them up a lot of times and they have even tried and made ample resolutions, still once comfortable they go back in their usual comfort belief system ( of the world being almost as sincere as they are).

They wait for people to do their part they carry out theirs, which most of the time doesn’t happen. It only frustrates them, disturbs their strong principles and sometimes even make them sorry for being sincere.

They need to understand the world is not going to go by their script. The only thing flexible or one can change is your attitude towards life. I am not asking you to be insincere but urging you to start the process of understanding the coexistence of good and bad. If you are sincere, great for you but that doesn’t mean the world is going to be the same. You are going to get a mix. Be prepared for different degrees of sincerity and accept it.

One more thing which we need to understand is sincerity is also subjective. Your meaning of it could be totally different from how someone else defines it. There is also your sincerity priority; something for you could be of high priority in your sincerity barometer while the same thing could be of medium or low priority for a friend. For eg., for some ppl being sincere in a relationship is top most priority while some feel professional sincerity is a must. If both will be together they are going to doubt each other’s personality finding each other being insincere in life. Try to start looking at the whole picture and not blinded by few situations!

A  sincere friend  of mine ( who goes through this situation on a regular basis) suggests that take your experience as a learning process and build your predictor chart of a situation or a person. He does that combined with his intuition and it really helps him deal with various new challenges of life.  If you assess a person as a threat to your sincere world, maintain a logical distance. It makes sense because as we know, we can never change a person and if his behavior is a threat to our peace, change yourself ( by changing the situation as much as possible).

After saying all of this, I would like to end this post by addressing all my sincere close ones; build strategies, make resolutions do whatever you want but the next time you are put on test, you’ll be  hardcore sincere again as it runs in your blood and that is why you remain so dear to us 🙂

 

Related articles

• Long Live Sincerity: Dealing With Snark and Hostility on The Internet (melissajenna.com)
• Sincerity is the key to honest communication (enlightenmetraining.wordpress.com)
• On sincerity…and you will not believe the connections (supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com)

 

Why do people lie, when it is not even required?

I really liked this lady. Found her very friendly, charming and easygoing. She was so much fun to be with, real friend material. We started hanging out a lot together…and then it happened for the first time, she lied for no proper reason. It was a shocker for me because there was no need to lie in that situation but she did it. Then eventually a pattern appeared. She just lies, reason or no reason!

First it did put me off and I thought of just maintaining my distance but then I understood that this lady is also seeking a friend. She is lonely and slowly  understood the reason for people walking away from her. She complained about the world being devoid of genuine people, without understanding the simple equation of her getting back what she is throwing at the world. She has no clue why people are trying to get as far as possible from her. This lady needed help!

She  just isn’t able to STOP herself and as she lacks insight in her own self, consequently there is no reason to work on it in her life. In her perception the problem lies with the world and she honestly feels that people are not being straightforward. In a lot of texts this kind of problem is often referred to as compulsive lying or pseudologia fantastica.

The major issue with this condition is the inability to understand that there is a problem. It starts as a non conflicting way of getting what you want but slowly a person loses all sense of honesty. The person starts living in a fake world which is weaved by his or her own lies which in their minds is the reality of this world.

Does that mean the person is happy in this self made world?

The answer is NO!

A person who is used to compulsive lying is a very lonely and sad person. Because of the uncontrolled behavior, there is a dearth of people who even want to be with them. They hurt people and as a result have no real friends or loved ones. It is not that these people don’t want love or relationships, on the contrary they yearn for meaningful relationships and feel frustrated when unable to do so.Sometimes because of their uncontrollable behavior they are also not able to hold a job

The reasons of getting into this pattern could be numerous. It may be a  disturbed childhood, positive reinforcement to petty lying, need for approval, trying to create an ideal image and so on. The problem begins when you stop lying by yourself and it just starts governing you. You see yourself lying and you seriously aren’t able to do anything about it as it is beyond YOU!

The first step towards recovery is Acceptance! If you’re the person dealing with it, accept it and if it is a friend, have the talk.

The next step is to seek a therapist. I am from the school of thought which strongly believes that whatever is learnt, COULD ALSO BE VERY WELL UNLEARNT!

Related articles

• P is for Pseudologia Fantasica (mommasmoneymatters.com)
• The Confessions And Concerns Of A Liar (anotherhallucination.com)
• curse of the compulsive lies (ettheguy.wordpress.com)