It seems all life is relationships. Everything we either meet or associate ourselves with be it people, ideas, objects, or even food. Relationships are mirrors of ourselves. What we attract always mirrors us. They either define the qualities that we have or the beliefs that we have about them. This holds for a boss, a friend, or even an employee.
The relationships that we form in the world with other people are a reflection of the notions that we have about ourselves. Essentially, it means we can’t find a trait in an individual if we don’t have that. Supposedly, you find an individual aggressive and dominating, it is because you too have the same trait at one level or another.
Though the first relationship we will ever have with someone is with ourselves. However, as we grow up we rarely realize it because our caretakers and elders in our family have a significant impact on what opinions we form about the do’s and don’ts’, of the right and wrong, of what is acceptable and what is not at a very tender age. Not only this, but they also form our opinions about who we are? , what are our strengths and weaknesses? , how does the world outside operate?
The way adults respond to us or our needs is often the way we respond to our needs. We can listen to our inner voice reprimanding us for doing a mistake just the way our elders did, we easily tune into the same tape recorder and punish ourselves. Likewise, we appreciate ourselves and prove our worth by doing those things that our parents or elders considered right. That’s why a dysfunctional home where an individual’s needs are met never raises a child with self-esteem. Validation and approval from the elders make children assume that they are ‘not good enough’, unworthy. Thereby, we make them believe that love is conditional, and only if they act as per the elder’s parameter of rights and wrongs they’ll be accepted. This makes a victim of the ‘ good girl/ boy syndrome’ because their unique talents and gifts will get obscured.
The most important and the first relationship we will ever have with someone is with ourselves, our bodies, and our being. It is only when we connect with ourselves authentically that we realize our ignorance when we overeat, under eat, over exhaust ourselves, overlook our needs, and get addicted to drugs.
Self-love can heal the emotional wounds that were transferred to us by our elders, which were transferred to them by their elders. Self-love can make dysfunctional loves turn miraculous and can dissolve illnesses. As a child, we needed our parent to soothe us but now as an adult, we can soothe ourself and release our past patterns of feeling inadequate. We won’t be able to get rid of our insecurities as a human and we don’t even have o pretend that we don’t have any. Instead, we could discover our individuality, distinct identities. We must stop paralyzing ourselves with negative thought patterns that belittle us.
In a relationship with other people, you can’t change the other person. You either love them or you don’t. You accept them the way they are or you don’t. To try to change them to be fit is like trying to change a dog for a cat, or a cat for a dog. They are what they are, just the way what you are, you are. Hunting for love never brings the right partner. It only creates longing and unhappiness.
Love is never outside, it is within us.