There was a time in my life where I think I was pretty unlovable. In my middle and later teenage years, I was a hot mess. Angry, arrogant and abrasive. A mouth that could reduce people to tears, and a mind that was screaming internally, and I didn’t realize that wasn’t normal.
After all, when something has been with you for as long as you can remember, it seems like it should always be there.
Not a recipe for someone who’s easy to get along with.
If you were to tell any of my high school teachers that I went back to get a Doctorate, I think every single one of them would have rolled their eyes in disbelief. After all I was the kid who literally decided not to show up for 6 weeks…the last two weeks of the school year, and the first 4 of the next.
I was too busy playing snooker or pool, or doing whatever else I could find to give me some sense of peace, and mostly being away from everyone and everything.
I’m not sure how my Mom and Dad put up with me.
It would have been really easy to write me off at that time, and believe I was never going to ‘be anything’ other than a nightmare. I know there were teachers at school who tolerated me, and yet there were a couple that still believed in me. They would try what they could to help, and even then, I wasn’t exactly grateful.
And for a long time, the older me couldn’t forgive the younger me for being…me.
I think all of us in our lives at some point have someone who we find it hard to love. Maybe it’s ourselves, maybe it’s our partners, or maybe it’s a grandchild who doesn’t live their life by our rules, and our expectations.
Maybe it’s someone at work, or a client, or a relative who just seems to push all of your buttons in worst way possible.
When you find that person, they may turn out to be a chance for you to learn more about yourself.
Because when we find someone who we struggle to feel kindness towards (unless they are deliberately hurting you) it’s usually because in some way they violate what we expect from them.
I've written before about how expectations destroy experiences, and in nowhere is this more noticeable than in the relationships we have with each other.
Expectations are poison to compassion.
I know that a younger version of who I am today was very angry with the much younger me who blew a lot of opportunities in high school. I can tell you that the me who is here today has learned to love both the much younger me, and the somewhat younger me who struggled to love himself and the self who came before.
When I realized that both of them were just living their trauma, and trying to find their way out of their darkness and into some semblance of light, I found that I could extend to them the love that both of them were desperately seeking.
Once you love yourself, and have accepted the nature of your humanity, you’ll find it easier to see past the flaws of others, and find respect, admiration and love for the humanity and the divinity within them.
Yes they may live in a way that you don’t understand, but the more you find compassion for yourself, the less you will need them to live to your expectations, and can appreciate the spark within them that you don’t understand, but may come to truly appreciate.
The less you are able to tolerate those who are different from you, the more you will benefit from doing some work on you.
I can’t tell you that it’s easy, because it really isn’t, but I can tell you that the more you find peace within yourself, the more you will find peace within the world.
Even with those who you currently struggle to love.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings