One of the things that I had to grasp is the fact that people will not stay in my life forever, that the existence of some people in my life will be just temporary.
You might think that this is obvious, right? but how many obvious things we know yet we fail to realize and apply in reality..
It’s easy to think of it as “people come and go”, like when a stranger becomes a friend or a lover then they leave to go back being strangers again.. but it gets harder when you think of it in terms of death, especially when it comes to a dear person whom we have a strong bond with, such as our parents. We naively think that as long as they’ve been around since we were born then they must stay there as always they did, but it’s not true. As Tim Urban says in one of his blog posts:
“When you look at that reality, you realize that despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life.”
No matter how depressing this seems, except that being aware of it will make us cherish the moments we have with the ones we love even more, it will push us to let go of trivial mistakes and appreciate their existense above anything else.
I’m gonna be vulnerbale here and share something personal with you. This whole matter is a little bit hard for me because I tend to be a sensitive person when it comes to people I care about (although I hide that under non-caring and cold behavior most of the time..) which is the reason why I try not to approach people and get close to them from the first place. In other words; fear of relationships.
I identify as an introvert, and you can say that I’m anti-social person, I believed this whole time that solitude and isolation are the best thing ever. I kept getting dopamine rewards everytime I read to an author praising them, or a youtube video saying that people who like those things are smarter than the rest. but this was just a defense mechanism of my brain and one of his dangerous biases. This hendered me from getting to know people on a deeper level or to let them know who truly I am.
Changing my opinion towards solitude was one of the quarantine’s consequences and maybe I’ll talk more about that in another article.
I don’t know if I knew this before about myself and denied it, but I’m genuinly aware of it now. things started to get more clear, and situations that were confusing before are making sense to me now.
I bet I’m not the only one here, reasons can differ from person to another but the result is one. it’s one of our brain’s defense mechanisms to avoid getting hurt (whatever our brain think that means), to runaway from the consequences resulting from interacting with other people; misunderstandings, deceive, dishonesty..etc
that being said, on the other side we’re missing the good things that could come out of such relationships.
I read once that a group of people on the death row were asked about what they think is the most important thing in life, and they answered: good relationships. it was not work, it was not money, it was the connection with another human being.
here’ three take-aways from this story:
- The bitter truth that we must face is: people’s time in our life is limited, and so is ours.
- Spend more quality time with the people you love and appreciate them.
- Test your beliefs about yourself: why you like something? why you don’t like something? try to dive more profondly on the reasons behind your charecteristics, you may be surprised of what you can find there as much as I did.
