My motivations for being who I am are very different than what comes off. I look for flaws and imperfections to help the people I care about avoid the aggravation and struggle of working through them. It is easy for me to see the holes in people and plans because I don't typically judge based on them. I generally am a pessimist because I want to avoid the pain that comes with let down. I argue and debate because I believe that intrinsically if people are shown truth and light that they WILL change. I do not compliment others because I often times feel like my compliments would not seem genuine. I criticize because I believe that people as a collective have the ability to be better than what I see.
Motivations are lies. They are what my mind tells me to feel good about myself. They are the perspective of my prideful self looking into a situation and doing the most diligence for self preservation. They are the feelings that I have and the thoughts that I have, but really they are mostly generated out of fear.
Like most people I have had a lot of moments in my life where I struggled and worked my way through imperfections. I am generally afraid of my imperfections because many times they seem insurmountable. Like everyone else I notice when people are empty and longing or have a missing piece, and I relate to them. I don't judge others based on their holes because reality is that I have my own gaping holes that without Christ I couldn't patch if I tried. I have a regular struggle with leaning on Him for this or that, and as a result I identify with other people's imperfections. I have had a LOT of let down in my life. Some of the biggest let downs I have ever had are ones where I felt abandon from my family and from my friends. Some things were as small as broken promises. Ultimately I don't linger on the surface of those let downs, but the ripples of repeated let downs have me pessimistic because I generally do not trust people to hold up their end. I could justify it by noting that people prove me right, but it's just me making another excuse for my own pride. I argue and want people to change because as ironic as it is I am tired of fighting. I am tired of trying to be perfect and trying to be everything that people expect of me. I think to myself, "If the rest of the world is a let down then why am I trying so hard?" but what it really comes down to is that I myself do not like change and I don't want to give up myself. Growing up I didn't receive many compliments. I wasn't the "well liked" kid and I haven't been cultivated to compliment others. It's not an excuse it's a matter of fact, and I don't compliment people often because I am someone who holds on to my past subconsciously rather than in my conscious mind. It's a passive retaliation to the hurt I felt growing up. I have had several people poke holes at me and I criticize others to do the same. Reality is that I don't have the stones to be doing what they are doing or I would simply do it. I criticize because I am too afraid to do something myself.
In the end I operate mostly out of fear and hurt. I've never seen the line that divides "happy" people from "unhappy" people and I am happy with my life. While I know the Christian response will be to lean on Christ I still seek a more surface level answer. How do you change from operating out of fear to operating out of love? How can I trust people while witnessing let downs and disappointments? How do you let go?
I challenge the complimenting statement of your post. It seems not more than maybe two weeks ago I received the compliment to the tune of “I like this…all of yours stuff on Deviant is pretty awesome too.. I never had the patience for those details” from you.
ReplyDeleteNo it might not be your strong suit, but we all have those.
It can be hard to trust people, especially when those you might want to trust seem to constantly put forth reasons not to trust them. And than there is always that secret fear of maybe they are lying to me just to be nice and don’t want to hurt my feelings.
Just because one is Christian doesn’t mean it automatically makes one trust everyone. Lord knows I’ve cried many nights seeking comfort for wrongs I’ve felt against me, as well as answers to your same questions, though I must say I’ve never been given a “direct” turn left at the next tree answer, but I always held onto the idea that despite not being answered, my answer would come one day.
As with all things it seems we must learn to crawl before we can learn to walk, to trust, to have faith in someone or something, it’s a learned process of repeaditly desiring to master it to not walk away from it. There will always be people who don’t have our best interests at heart, but there will also always be people who do, but because we are imperfect people living our imperfect lives, sometimes our actions hurt others, even when we don’t mean to.
Love tells us to keep no records of wrongs, and that is something hard to do because there are so many reasons why we should remember those wrongs (say if someone did something really bad) but I think that if the person truly wants to be trusted keeping record is the last thing one should do, especially if one is trying to do better.
And than there are times when we feel distant and alone and we feel all those people who claimed to be our friends aren’t there for us, but it’s tricky to trust someone, because unlike God they can’t be there RIGHT when we need or want them to be, and unlike God they don’t know what hurts us/angers or makes us feel unloved. And because of this, trust becomes a work in progress when in turn the people wanting to earn and give trust slowly give parts of themselves to others, secret parts, small things at first, to see if they are what they say. Not everyone is worthy of 100% trust (the kind you’d pick up your family and leave some place for) some people are just worthy of common human decency.
Trust, like love, and all other things is a work in progress, or at least it’s how I see it.
What keeps me sane, what keeps me trying to trust people despite my mind telling me how dumb it is, is the belief that even if I can’t see it or am not able to understand it, is that every even in this life happens for a reason, it has a purpose. And I have a will to let that impact me negatively or positively, should I build myself on negative grounds I believe I won’t live a very happy life, but if I chose to try and see the good, to look for it, and to forgive the people I want in my life and try my best to work out what ever thing that has hurt me, I believe I’ll arrive in a better place. :)
Trust starts with communication, it ends where ever you feel it should :) Everyone is worth giving a shot at trust, but in the end not all our worthy of it.