People...

I am not a fan.  I used to be, but the more time passes, the more I feel like people are just not worth the effort.  I will own, I am jaded.

I am rapidly coming to not understand the world I live in.  And I think the number one cause is people.  I just don’t understand why there is so much hate and discordant dialogue.  It feels to me like we should be pulling together, but every day there is more disparity between two main ideologies that seem like there is no peace to be had, ever.

And the older I get, the less and less tolerance I have for it all.  The rhetoric and the reason.  I just feel myself retreating, pulling inward because I know that, at least, I am safe.  I am a safe person for me, and also for you.  It is you that I am becoming increasingly unsure about.

 “People who come into your life are either reflections of a repeated cycle or guides towards growth. Notice the difference.”

I am not sure who said this, probably some amalgamation of lots of thoughts and people, but I believe that people are always both.  The people we choose to relate to or engage with are always going to be reflections of a repeating cycle and a guide towards growth.  The choice is what is ours.  Do we take the time to see how this is a repeating pattern is negatively affecting us?  Or do we choose to ignore it and allow the cycle to play out on a loop for our entire lives?

Are we victims of our choices in others or are the others the gifts of discovery in our own lives?  Can we see and own our own choices in the selection of who we friend, date, marry and love?  Can we see within every relationship in our lives, there is a repeating pattern and a guide for growth?  Seeing there are always two things co-occurring is, for me, the basis for a reflected and deeply lived life.

I am disappointed in people.  The masses and the individuals.  By and large, people have failed to meet my somewhat lofty expectations.  Men have been a repeating disappointment which has left me in my own self imposed solitary confinement that feels more permanent with each passing day.  Friends and acquaintances have so often failed to show up in meaningful ways that I have largely just stopped trying.  My inner circle now close and intimate, and I will admit, is still hard for me to engage even though I love them and want them in my life.

The more I see of people, the less I want to know them.  The less I want to engage.  Dating is a shitshow that only breaks us further.  Friendship is fleeting, or folly, unless you are lucky enough to have a few friends who have stood the test of time.  Imperfect souls, like yourself, who love you no matter what.  Your presence in their lives a feature of their own recurring dysfunction and also a guide to a higher level of living. And vice versa.

I wake most days with this existential angst of quite desperately wanting connection and intimacy and vulnerability and then go out into a world where I feel that wanting all of those things becomes more fleeting with each passing day.  And I wonder, always, is it me?  Am I just the problem in all of this?  Destined to walk the earth surrounded by opportunities for connection but wholly missing them?  But then I try to relate and I can’t.  I just can’t.  My inner circle small and lovely and now a self reinforcing solitude.

I am lonely, but I feel most alone when surrounded by people doing all their peopley things.  It feels like its a no win situation for me:  I cannot stop being me and you cannot stop being you.

I still try, every day, to get past my own resistance and see the child within each of us, the little person quite desperately seeking love and approval and acceptance and recognition.  I pray that somehow, me noticing, improves us all as a species, if only a little.  I walk the line daily of a vow of ongoing solitude and a desperate attempt to make contact.

Social media is going to ruin us all.  But I will post this blog there as soon as I am done writing it.  So much for ideals and values.  I am part of the problem but I also believe that means I am also part of the solution.  I’m just not sure what that is.

What is the solution to people?  Prayer helps.  Mediation helps.  Grace helps.  But even those lofty ideals and practices are not enough to stave off the realism that comes at me all day, everywhere.  I think this is why I love to travel, people change when I travel because I change when I travel.  I have the time I forget I have on the daily.  I’m not consumed with clocks or schedules or deadlines.  I am just there, existing in the world, and so are you.

I am not sure what to do about people.  And I am one of them so that makes this plight quite personal.  I don’t know what to do with me or you.  So, very often, I retreat, I am going within and praying for understanding and love to emanate from me.  And to walk the duality that the people in my life are always going to be part of my recurring pattern of that blend of functionality and dysfunctionality.  Always a guide to a new elevated plane of existence for me.  I notice the difference, I can’t help it.  And I think I might be happier if I could not notice anymore.

Sometimes I really wish I could be someone else.  Someone content to live, and love and work, and not overthink and feel everything to death.  But I can’t.  It isn’t my lot.  I am one of those people which is rapidly becoming a lesson of its own.

Again, still...