I had written a blog with full on enthusiasm a few days ago, due to time constraints I couldn’t edit before posting it and in a few days so many events happened, not at all coincidental which made me reconsider to post that blog as it seems very frivolous now.

Life sometimes makes you stop and take a good look at yourself. This is an ambiguous post about an ambiguous feeling and emotion, that’s the only way I can describe it.

It made me think how much we put our self worth and love onto the people we love, how much we burden them with what we expect of them and our own higher expectations on them. It’s easy to say, ‘ I don’t care’ or to say ‘I don’t give a f..k, it’s easy but in reality we do care, we do care a lot. Our entire image and personality is built on what our closed loved ones think of us. Yes it is delusional, bordering on low self esteem but it is also the truth. We are social animals. We thrive on community, and for that you don’t need a whole lot of people, just your close ones approval is enough to make you feel good or bad.

I can only speak from the perspective of my life experiences. First is the approval of the father, the mother, to their expectations of us, and to us trying not to disappoint them and at the same time screaming within to seek our own identity. We want to be independent in our thoughts, in our way of life and yet we want them to approve our need of independence and thinking. We seek subconsciously their approval, their happy approval at that. Is that realistic? No. Because you can’t have both ways.

The next is seeking approval from friends, your close ones. There is a beautiful bonding that happens, you seek the commonalities that exists in you in them. You want similar but not the same. You want something different yet not conflicting.

The last but not the least is the stage where you constantly seek approval and apply your self worth in the people you truly love. Their approval mostly determines how loved you feel, and no matter how much you say, “it doesn’t matter I love myself,” it comes with a sub text of – it completely depends on the other. In a way your self worth is tied to that. The so called significant other or whatever label you want to put it.

Why do we do this? For the rest of our lives? Wanting people to change, wanting people to understand, wanting people to give them their stamp of approval on you. Why? I have been pondering about this for quite sometime. There must be an answer or answers and the ones that come out to me is harsh and brutal.

Yes we are born alone, and we die alone yet between the beginning and the end is this endless sea of experiences, people, the ones you loved, the ones you loved and lost, the ones that stay with you and the ones that leave, the ones that will change your life, to the ones that will damage you, and it’s vice versa. It happens like a cycle, like a whirlpool.

And each one of us have a pattern that continues in cycles. The same pattern repeats itself. If you are not aware of it, you will never know it. But dig deep inside and you will realise we have a pattern. It starts right from us to the people we meet, to the relationships we form, to the laws of attraction, to dependency. It just keeps repeating.

Is there a way to get out of this ‘Chakravyuh?’ Maybe there is, maybe it won’t happen like ‘ a Big Bang’ and you achieve Moksha and feel you are beyond all this. I think it happens when you take one tiny step to break that pattern.

It is scary, it means you don’t know what exists on the other side, because that pattern made you uncomfortably comfortable. That pattern you have been following is predictable and in a sadistic warped way, it gives you ‘security’ ‘safety’ because who knows what’s on the other side- that solid hole if you break it. This pattern has stuck on faithfully to you, no matter how toxic or distorted it was, maybe it’s the only one thing that is constant in you.

We need to ask ourselves, can we break that pattern bit by bit? Not through courage, not through dare, but through fear. Yes, by being shit scared that you are doing it and yet you are doing it. By not always being a ‘brave’ ‘courageous’ warrior – I don’t believe in them anymore as these terms are being over used repeatedly nowadays. But to be so scared while doing it and yet doing it.

By being vulnerable and open to the consequences. By knowing that what comes out of that, might make you a better person, it might give you a different perspective, maybe a fresh lease of life.

Maybe then, only then we will begin to love and accept ourselves as we are, no strings attached. It’s you only. Maybe we can aspire and reach our purpose, to what our great ancestors wrote in the Upanishads, the ‘Mahavakyas’ ;

‘‘Tat Tvam Asi’ – That you are 🙏