We often assume that people who have their life together, are necessarily happy. However recently there is also an ever growing emptiness over my life amidst my "achievements". This emptiness is not the melodramatic sort, it does not arrive with big clashes of cymbals over ringing trumpets. It creeps up unto me like a drought, and a haze that doesn't seem to stop shrouding over my psyche. There is a schism between what I have, and how I feel inside. I am immensely grateful and fortunate, to do well in my career. I can even say I'm trying to repair past friendships. With all the fullness and goodness in my life, the great void is created because I have not been able to share my happiness with someone.
I suppose I want someone to be proud of me, and my father, despite his questions on my career (it's difficult to explain what I do to him sometimes), is definitely a person who beams at his daughter. Yet on the other hand, I want someone to understand what I do, and be proud of me for that. I guess I'm seeking for approval. This infantile wish, is something we all share. Yet it's not the best of reasons to want to share your life with someone, because it'd end up like boasting - almost like a puppy looking for belly rubs by its master.
I think the emptiness is quickly bottoming out because it is also a sign of pride. It's a proclamation, "I am this awesome person, why does no one love me?" However, like a good friend told me, you don't need to be a great person, you only need to be a person good enough for the one who loves you. I suppose a life in Singapore, the competition has instilled a sense of inadequacy. The survivalist-mentality can drive me to continually think that I'm not good enough. Is it a driver of my success in my career? Recently, and reluctantly, I have some to contend with such questions. I think it is, and it has come to the tipping point that I have to re-evaluate how work-life-love are approached. I have this void in the first place, because my motivation for working hard, was to win approval from other people. It's not a feeling that is unfamiliar to the best of us.
So is there a need to shift and reconcile these feelings of insecurity? What makes us deserving to be loved and to love in return? However those questions objectify ourselves, as things that have worth. However liking someone does should not be transactional, nor be based upon a person's worth/impressive resume. We don't need an interview to be a friend/lover. Whilst disappointments and misunderstandings do happen, but they speak towards an incompatibility of character (it's interesting to note in french, that sentir can be used in the context of friendship, and literally translates I don't feel well with the person.) Therefore it is not our outward achievements that make us who we are, but our sentir, senses, and chemistry with the other person. So this void I've been feeling, to want to share my full life with someone, imposes an unfair burden on that person. It almost calls for someone to judge me, to "interview" and see if I'm "worthy" of his affections. Why did I feel this way? I suppose a simple explanation is because that's the only mode of assessment that I've been good at, or have always known. Writing this now explicitly, my dear reader you might possibly think that this is pretty obvious stuff. However, these feelings manifests in many different ways and some are subtle. It should be so ironic that dating and meeting new people should trigger these uncomfortable but necessary introspections. Now that I've transcended into another field of strategies, I find these no longer work, and it forces me to look into myself - and of course it's always hard to start looking at ourselves. So some of us project that uneasiness, externalise the blame unto other people. "He's not good enough for me", "He's just a jerk?" or "He's just not clicking with me well." Maybe the barriers to our own happiness, are ourselves?
No comments:
Post a Comment