They say don’t settle; it’s better to be alone than to compromise. There is truth in that, and there is weight.
In the process of not settling, we can become unsettled and isolationist. We also put it upon ourselves to discern emotional wisdom without an essential objectivity. Humans are interdependent, social, energetic, spiritual individuals. We are feeling entities and physical expressionists. We need feedback.
We will always find outlets for the messy process of healing, growth, self-knowing, and love. They tend to manifest as overcompensation using what (or who) is convenient or available; we want to avoid hurt and pain, and if we are the sensitive type, this usually means closing in and collapsing into our reality bubbles. It inherently defines a bit of a xenophobic landscape.
We don’t want to want, nor need… anyone. Our modern culture of “I am my own person” flies in the face of traditional notions of partnership, and our social paradigms around relationship have evolved to suit. This has its benefits, but it’s created interpersonal chaos in its wake.
There seems to be a considerable lack of emotional maturity in coupling. Conceivably it’s a matter of unresolved childhood trauma; ineffective parenting from carried-forward ignorance; underdeveloped personalities; unclear or unknown boundaries — or a host of emotional dysfunction accumulated through generations of non-integrated, non-realized, incomplete egocentricities.
Our Western world is fraught with identity crises. We exist in an era of terrible uncertainty as to social status, personal purpose, spirituality, sexuality, political progress and social equality. As one would expect we don’t have a clue what we truly desire from a partner. We don’t know what we want for and from ourselves!
And when we do occasionally meet with a flicker of what resonates with our heart, all that hard work done to build up emotional barriers and safe spaces inevitably causes us to distrust it.
It’s interesting how the struggle for validation, individuality, and sovereignty of our own spirit reflects both in the microcosm and in the collective at large. Maybe what we see “out there” should help us decode and decipher what’s going on “in here”?
It’s relatively easy to maintain a comfort zone within our self-imposed, self-defined, superficial safety nets. But life is defined by expansion, inquiry, experimentation, exploration — within and without. Our heart defies social convention and cultural conformity; it justly demands the truth, authenticity, and character; vulnerability. “Truth” is, of course, the antithesis of stagnation, and will define its scope through the living of life, courageously. It may require scraped knees, cut fingers, bruised egos, and humility.
It will require the occasional broken heart…
It’s okay to hurt. It’s okay to feel, enormously. It’s okay to heal. It’s okay to trust, take risks, and to be hurt again.
It’s okay to love, unsettlingly.
Solvitur ambulando