When we look at the various people in our lives, do we ask ourselves, “Who are they,” or do we pose the question, “Are they who we want them to be?” Whether it’s our lovers, children, siblings, friends, neighbors, co-workers or anyone for that matter, what are we expecting from others? Beyond that, what do we have the right to expect – from anyone in our lives? Below, I attempt to address the opposing conflicts of people being who they are, versus who we want them to be.
First impressions don’t lie
Whether we are aware of our intuition consciously or not, when we first meet someone, we get a gut feeling about them. It is not conscious or thought out! It is instantaneous. What we feel about someone may not make sense at the time, but it is always right. Our intuition speaks to us with a truth far beyond what outer appearance say about a person. “When I met him, I couldn’t stand him,” a woman recalls. “But then later, I fell in love with him. I thought he would change for the better, but he never did. He turned out to be every bit as bad as I first felt he would be the day when I met him.” But what happens when we don’t listen to our first impressions?
In the 1960’s there was song by Al Wilson called “The Snake.” The basic plot line of the song was that a woman found this half frozen snake and took it home to warm it up, nurture it and try to love it. After stroking its skin and giving it a kiss, the snake returns the favor with a vicious poisonous bite. The woman is terribly upset, yet the response of the snake is cynical; however truthful: “You knew I was a snake when you took me in. What did you expect?”
This story clearly illustrates “the snake” is following and living up to its true nature; it is being who it is. What was the problem, then? It was the woman’s expectations: wanting “the snake” to behave in a certain way and expecting it to be grateful to her because she saved it.
There are three pertinent issues here: 1) – Our inability to see people for who and what they really are. 2) – Our expectations that people will treat us in the way we feel we deserve to be treated. 3) – Our expectations that people should treat us in a certain way based on what we’ve done for them or our feelings for them.
See people for who and what they are
If someone looked at a trailer, closed their eyes and asked themselves if it was someday going to become a big beautiful mansion, what would the rational response be? “Well of course not. It is just a trailer and will never be a mansion,” would be the obvious answer. The same thing can be said regarding people. When you look at a person, you can ask, wish, hope and pray that they are going to be someone or something that fits your needs and wants – but is this really true?
When looking at anybody, you must look beyond your own emotional expectations. This may seem difficult to do, but it is not if you keep one thing in mind; simply look at the facts. What does this person say to you? What do they do? How are they behaving toward you? Don’t base your perception of the person in question on your personal needs being fulfilled. Just look at reality. A person who never contacts you is not trying to build a connection with you. Someone who won’t return your phone calls is not developing communication with you. Someone who ignores you when you pass them by is not really open to a relationship with you.
Also, don’t romanticize what this person may have been through in the past. Often, we fantasize that someone has been severely wounded or hurt, as a way of giving them multiple excuses for their behavior regarding us. It’s as if their negative behavior toward us becomes explainable and excusable if they’ve been “hurt before.” In my experience as a reader, almost all of the times when I’ve seen someone make excuses for another; it is false and has little or no basis in reality. As sobering and emotionally frustrating as it may be, the facts speak volumes and shouldn’t be ignored!
Don’t be surprised by someone being themselves
Often we seem to be surprised by someone behaving in the way that they do. Appearing startled, it’s as if we pretend that we didn’t see it coming. “Why did my sister treat me this way again, always ignoring me and not returning my phone calls,” a brother questions? However, is there really anything to be dumbfounded about here? For most of his life, his sister has ignored him over and over again. It would be as if every time you ate a certain food, it made you nauseous, but each time it was eaten, you would seem shocked by this occurrence.
Like the old phrase, “a leopard doesn’t change its spots,” his sister has demonstrated the same patterns continually! So why is her brother surprised, then? Because he is holding onto the hope that his sister is indeed going to change. With that hope as the basis of his perception of her, reality becomes like a splash of ice-cold water in the face upon waking. Since he wants his sister to treat him well so badly, he is willing to exchange hope for reality. This sets him up to feel like he was blindsided by a truck while calmly driving down the highway. It’s not that he didn’t see it coming; he chosetonot see it coming; therefore, each time that he is disregarded, he goes through the same painful reaction, like scratching an old wound open once again.
If every time you drove down a street full of potholes, your car hit them and damaged the alignment, would you keep driving down the same street? Illustrated in this way, it almost seems silly to repeat the same choice; but it is indeed the same scenario to set up this predictable emotional hurt again and again. Instead, if he decided to acknowledge who she is and adjust his expectations accordingly, it sets him up to be much less vulnerable to her negative treatment. This frees him to first feel better about himself by not allowing her to keep repeatedly victimizing him.
We can pick our friends, but we obviously can’t pick our family. Family relationships can be complex, frustrating and are often karmic. While there are no easy guidelines, I think it’s important to keep certain things in mind: First, you can try to let your family know your needs and see if they are responsive to them. If they are not open to or considerate of your needs then one has to decide how much to keep the door open. One can minimalize various family members, but because it is family, it should be decided carefully and on a case by case basis. In rare instances, ties may need to be dramatically reduced based on issues that simply don’t get resolved. Always keep in mind, though, that they are simply being who they are, not who we want them to be.
Don’t expect them to change based on your love of them
Love is unconditional. Real love is without expectation. Pure love is the highest form of acceptance imaginable! However, the kind of “love” we’re referring to in this writing, for lack of a better term, can be called “self interest love.” With “self interest love,” it is that sense of getting what we want. Unless our desires are fulfilled, we experience the downward spiral of disappointment that first started with fantasy and hope. Once we realize that he or she isn’t really ever going to change based on our feelings for them, it can be devastating.
“If I continue to love him, I believe that someday he will love me in return,” a woman firmly states. Here we see how our own emotional expectations define what we believe to actually be truthful about the outcome of a relationship situation. For any of us who are not involved in those emotions at the time, we could comment on how inaccurate her statement appears to be. It’s as if she has decided that this is the way it is – end of story. It’s all based on believing that her love is going to work the miracle: change him, draw him to her and cause him to ultimately love her.
One could counter with the question, “Why should she love him if he won’t ever love her back?” Let’s take the question further: Why does anyone love anyone if it won’t ever work out? First, when we do emotionally commit to someone, we never know the outcome. However, there is a big difference between hoping someone will love us in return, versus expecting them to do so! The woman mentioned above has created an expectation sort of like the sureness that most of us have that the sun shall rise in the morning. Well of course it probably will, but we should refrain from having that same sureness regarding another person giving us what we want, all based on what we feel for them!
Who loves someone and holds onto those feelings all the while believing that nothing is really ever going to work out anyway? That would be ridiculous! That’s like saying I’ll invest in the stock market, knowing I’m going to lose everything I have! However, hope (within reason) is certainly much more applicable here. With hope, though, we must also be grounded in reality. Hope cannot take the place of the facts and the truth of what the other person is doing or not doing regarding us.
However, when our love of another has expectation attached to the belief of changing someone else, it becomes dangerous. We somehow become justified in our feelings, as if somehow we deserve their love in return. “I have put a lot into this relationship; therefore I deserve something in return,” a person demands! This leads to resentment, rage and a possible explosion in our lives. It’s as if we’re waiting for the birthday present we expected that never comes!
From a higher perspective, try to not base loving someone on changing them, as it doesn’t work that way. God made us with free will, autonomy and sovereignty. We are not designed to change based on another’s affection for us. That is an individual decision, whether it’s emotionally pleasing to us or not! Rise above that terrible entanglement of the emotions and disappointments that come with the following self-defeating formula: Love + patience = change of the other person = them loving me in return!
The rescuer expectation
The story of “thesnake” given above illustrates an example that gets played out constantly, where a person believes “the snake,” or negative individual involved won’t really end up hurting them. You might ask, “How could anyone be so blind?” Because our ego gets involved and the ego wants what it wants! I believe I’m going to win! Somehow I will get them to love me, and I will win the battle. When I do, I’ll feel like a superwoman or a superman! If a person in this position can get “the snake” to love them, it’s as if they have played the role of God! In reality, we never love a person like this is spite of their bad qualities; we love them because of their bad qualities! The badness provides that ultimate challenge and with that challenge, it makes the supposed victory seem so much sweeter. If you were a boxer, would you feel pumped up knocking out a tiny little 90-pound weakling, or would you need to defeat the heavyweight champion of the world to feel victorious? Besides feeling merely victorious, the ego projects the essence of being in control through trying to conquer as well.
In these instances, the ego masquerades as being nurturing, caring, kind and even compassionate. “I have been put in this person’s life to help him heal,” becomes a lofty rationalization. The illusion of a higher destiny comes into play. This is merely a smokescreen to hide the true motives behind such actions. The real motive is that the person wants “the snake” to love them – plain and simple. And that’s not a bad thing – it just isn’t a higher, compassionate and selfless form of action. However, with the guise of compassion, one looks admirable in their self-destructive pursuit of people who are like “the snake.”
Perhaps the root cause of this entire scenario is that the rescuer is trying to actually rescue themselves. They are attempting to heal their own low self worth through being loved by the other person who is emotionally unattainable (the snake). It’s as if the validation through being loved is the magic wand that cures everything. Therefore, “the snake” is given a power over them (in their own mind) equivalent to God Almighty!
But do we ever win this contest? Depending on the stubbornness and size of our egos, we keep hitting our head against the wall. Sooner or later, we either get humbled and truly walk away from dangerous relationships, or we keep repeating the same pattern. At some point, though, we will all get tired of the snakebite, so to speak, and move forward to meet people who truly nurture and care for us! In this way, we do finally win!
Don’t take it personally
“Judy did it to me again! Every day I come into work she says something rude and offensive to me. I’m sick of it,” John exclaims! Most of us would sympathize with John as no one wants to be addressed in that way. He took is personally, as most of us would, too. After all, it was done to him, so why shouldn’t he take it personally?
In reality, though, a person’s behavior toward us has very little to do with who we are, even though what they are doing is being done to us. It says far more about them than it ever could indicate about ourselves! Actions are a mirror; a mirror of all that is inside of someone who performs the actions. We, as individuals merely reflect back to others their own personal inner mirror! When people attack us, they are in conflict within! When someone judges us, they are showcasing their internal criticism of themselves. When someone refuses to acknowledge us, it is a reflection of how they dismiss their own value!
If that is true, you might say, what can be done then to not take it all so personally? First, try to gain a perspective that is observational, not reactive. This way, your emotions, anger and ego are not engaged. And when you are not drawn in, the treatment of you, however good or bad it is, deflects right off of you and returns to its native nothingness!
Just like when John encounters Judy at work as mentioned above, her actions are about her. John comes into work, pleasant and friendly, but Judy is mean, slams the door behind her and says something rude. If you think of it, what did John have to do with this anyway? Nothing at all… John’s emotional reaction causes him to initially think that Judy doesn’t do this to anyone else…but that is not true.
Judy has a reputation of being cold, mean, abrupt and terse to virtually everyone. It just depends on her mood. It isn’t based on what other people have done or didn’t do to her. It is built on her ego, arrogance and selfishness. As her moods overtake the proceedings, she dominates the ambience and the room! This is all about control!
Remember, when a person conducts themselves in a certain way, it reflects on their level of understanding; their level of consciousness. Anyone always behaves at their current level of understanding that they possess on a spiritual level. This way, if you really stop and think about it, it is not about you – it never really is. With that sense of knowing, it is freeing and liberating to not take it all so personally any longer!
Release the battle and change yourself instead
When it’s all said and done, with all of the energy we put into trying to change people, just think of how much more productive it would be to change ourselves instead? Don’t worry about carrying the burden of a particular person treating you in a certain way! Just work on yourself and your reactions to others! There is an old saying that states that you can’t control other people’s actions, but can control how you react to those actions! This way, we avoid the obvious frustration of trying to make someone into what we want them to be, therefore, always coming up short. By releasing the burden and changing ourselves for the better, we become a magnet for new and wonderful people to love us in return -- naturally and organically. Simply by letting go and accepting people for who they are, we set ourselves free! By doing so, we begin to appreciate ourselves even more and we will magnetize to those who can give something wonderful back to us! That is the law of the universe – the law of attraction – like attracts like!
In addition, getting off of the roller coaster ride of needing to change people gives us more energy as we’re not drained by that constant push and pull of those types of relationships. When someone doesn’t change as we have architected them to do, we feel frustrated, anxious, and ultimately as if we have failed! But this is an unwinnable war! Sooner or later, we have to throw in the towel…Throwing in the towel is not a defeat, but a victory which allows us the great gift of positive change! We’re no longer defining our self worth by setting up impossible odds!
With improved self-esteem, all areas of our lives benefit: health, finance, general well-being and far better relationships will absolutely be ours! With an improved attitude through releasing the burden and internal change, it is far more likely that all that comes to us will be for our highest good! It isn’t just the case of letting go of something we want to get nothing in return – period. By letting go of the battles that can’t be won, we benefit in countless ways endlessly and eternally, bringing to us those who are truly right for us as we are for them!
© 2008 Jim1537. All Rights Reserved.
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