In most of my blog-posts, I make it a point to write directly about myself. The idea there is to not generalize what I notice in myself for the rest of humanity. But then there are some observations that we can make that holds good for a large section of the population – which includes myself in it. This blog-post is about such an observation that holds good for a vast majority of people around us.
Most of us go through our lives with a expectation for life out there to “come and do it for me” or “come and do it to me”. Its like we go out into the world and interact with the life out there and expect the world/life to make things happen for us. For example, we want the politicians to make the country a better place for us, we want the movies to make us laugh/cry/sing etc, we want the girlfriend/boyfriend to make us happy, we want the spouse to make us feel special, we want the job to bring satisfaction to us, we want the money/social-status/property to talk to the society and bring some respect/reputation for us, we want our friendships to create happiness for us and so on.
Take a look at one of the most powerful relationships in a person’s life – MARRIAGE. Off-late, I notice a lot of marriages translating into divorces – atleast in my friends/relatives circle. In most cases it appears as though one of the partners in the marriage expected to get something out of the relationship by imposing an expectation on how the other should make them feel. And when that expectation did not turn out, they went for a divorce. I can understand if the marriage turned into divorce after the couple stayed together for a considerable amount of time and then figured that the marriage was not working. But the instances that I am talking about are the ones where one of the partners enters into the marriage with a firm commitment to break it up!
I recently tumbled upon a short-movie on YouTube that kind of describes what I am talking about here (although the woman in the video does consider going for a divorce not immediately after the wedding, but after sometime). Take a look at it here.
It is almost like people enter into a relationship to feel complete OR to feel great OR to feel happy OR satisfied OR to make one’s life happen (whatever that means). I like the way Werner Erhard communicates this.
I just picked up marriage, because it is one of the most powerful relationships in life. But this kind of “come-and-do-it-to-me” outlook is also observable at work, with friends, with politics, with finance. The problem with the “come do it to me” outlook is that – life almost never “does” it for you. Therefore we kind of start feeling that life is not working for us. We really are trying to navigate with a wrong map!
Unless we come from a space of being whole and complete – we really have nothing to contribute to life. Unless we are clear that we are alright, whole and complete – we will always navigate through life looking for pieces to pick-up and put-together to make us feel whole and complete. If we can just take a moment and get really present – it becomes very clear that we are already whole and complete and that nothing needs to be added or removed from who we are!