I have an interview on Friday with a company I’m really drawn to from an ideological perspective. It seems like I want to be aligned with the mission and values of an organization that I’m giving a large part of my energy and time to more than other things. Perhaps a lot of us want that in some way and it’s just hard to find sometimes. I don’t know. I feel like I’ve watched myself care far to much about what I think other people think about me and it’s led me to make some fairly damaging life decisions. It reminds me of what Brene Brown talks about in that Netflix special “A Call to Courage”. This struggle where we want to be like “I don’t give a shit what anybody thinks about me”. How it’s necessary to care what some people think about us, but how we have to develop a way of filtering that or we remain paralyzed. The way Brene does it has to do with vulnerability and people who are also showing up and being vulnerable with the way that they are engaging with their lives. A critique from a person who is down in the mud with you struggling through the process of becoming might be worth listening to more than the person jeering from the sidelines. Although both are speaking, giving energy to both isn’t going to lead me towards what I long for out of my life.
The truth is, rejection is hard for anyone. It hurts to care about people and have them stop showing up or decide that they can’t hold space for you in their lives, but it happens. It’s okay to hurt, but that space they don’t have for us doesn’t mean we aren’t worth the effort it takes to find people who will make space to see, know and love us into wholeness. Relationships are hard and they take so much energy to maintain. Going beyond the surface in life can be scary and I think there are different levels and spaces that people occupy in different areas of life. Trying to numb out what I care about because I believe it isn’t worth pursuing or people will think I’m dumb or whatever is not a way I want to live, I’ve decided.
I think it’s important to follow the sounds we hear inside our hearts that are pure. I think we all have longings and I think sometimes, at least in my life, my attempts to satisfy those deeply good parts of myself resulted in me being very injured. There have been points where I’ve experienced what I believe to be failure in my life and the narratives I internalized in those moments of distress often times actively undermined growth, while encouraging paralysis and self hatred.
I think we need each other, but I can’t personally hold space for everyone and neither can you. I think this is where learning to speak in a ways that express who we are becoming to one another can help us to cultivate depth in relationship. All that to say, I think seeking to maintain a certain image has made me pretty unhappy overall. I’m learning how to navigate the tension of trust and vulnerability. I’m learning what voices are helpful for me to give credence to when it comes to how I’m moving through my life and which ones (most of which are just projections from my own mind) need to be allowed to pass on.
I’d say I’m pretty early on in my process with this. Keep going. There’s more to find.
structures of home 