Connections and Reflections

08 Oct Connections and Reflections

Posted at 01:02h in Personal by

I’m quite shy around strangers… But once I’m introduced and know the name it’s easy for me to be straightforward and open.

I rely a lot on my intuition about people and usually quite right about what people are like from the inside. For me other people are other versions of myself. As they say: “Know yourself”, so I try to recognize bits and pieces of myself in others.

But the whole other story is people’s relations, feelings and emotions.
I am often in the dark about what others really feel and think about me. And may be this is even for the best, so I can worry about it a little less.

As I’m writing it right now, I think that’s my problem. May be I don’t know what to feel towards other people and I don’t separate them into categories of friends and acquaintances. Most of my feelings are inside and about myself, not others.

So. What do I feel. From big to small:

  1. Love, happiness, kindness, tenderness.
    That’s almost the same feeling. Feeling of wonder, magic, connection. When you feel that everything is connected and beautiful.

  2. Loneliness, disconnection, sadness.
    That’s when you want to be better understood and appreciated by other people. When I want to say hello to a stranger, smile to somebody, feel feedback from the world.

  3. Confusion, fear, anxiety.
    When I feel that I’m not understood properly. When I am afraid that I am bad at communicating and weird. That’s where all my shyness comes from.

  4. Lust, ambition.
    The older I get, the less it moves me at all. And the more it is connected and intertwined with other feelings.

  5. Embarrassment, disgust, hate.
    When I see something in other people that I hate in myself.
    I’m trying to fight it and to accept it. But usually it only fuels my anxiety.

My main coping mechanism is to laugh and try to turn bad/sad into bittersweet. I tell myself that this way may be I shall accept it better. Not sure if that’s true.

I try to distant myself from my feelings so it is easier to reflect on them. (It also sometimes results in a wicked and strange sense of humour.)

The mind is the Bodhi tree,
The body is the mirror stand.
The mirror is originally clean and pure;
Where can it be stained by dust?

© Hui-neng, the illiterate woodcutter from the barbarian south, suddenly enlightened

When we self-reflect we see our self as an object and as a subject. And at the same time we see this situation as a whole from a 3rd person perspective. Our true self is like that 3rd person, empty and clear mirror.

This thought gives me some peace and happiness.

Sources of inspiration