This is a blog post by Floh member Aprajita.
A piece by a fellow Floh member and a dear friend with whom I rekindled my acquaintance through Floh, pushed the trigger to finally give some form to my own thoughts.
Sharing does give one a feeling of imagined camaraderie, doesn’t it? So it seems like a good idea to kind of explore my view as well.
That Warm Fuzzy Feeling
We all crave love – that warm fuzzy feeling in the belly; that comfort of having someone to hold on-to, on our good and bad days alike; someone who won’t ask you questions but stand by you like a rock.
In short, a bestie and a lover, rolled in one.
And once you have felt that spark or even imagined a life with a person in that manner, you start craving it like a drug. Then all that matters is to have that ‘someone’ in your life.
You start depending on another without having another to depend on. The idea of ‘someone’ in your life takes its head.
It becomes a task, a chore, a must-have, something that you need to complete a circle in your life. And so it happened with me. Before I realized, I had turned into an anxious someone I did not recognize, and worse, I could not like.
I went into a retrospective mode after a brief relationship that a sane thinking me wouldn’t have gotten into at the very first place.
Loving Myself
As a third party, it was so obvious. I wanted to ‘be with someone’ without truly being with my own self first. We all have insecurities, fears and shortcomings. But without laying them bare and admitting them to myself, I had wanted another to embrace them.
How could I, in my search, ask someone to walk into my life, accept me for who I am, when I did not give this respect and love to my own self? It made me confront myself with some very uncomfortable questions regarding the sense of self-worth and how much I happened to pull myself down on occasions. I am sure, we all have, at some point or the other been guilty of unfounded expectations from our own person. But there are times in life we are forced to sit and really look at them from a distance. I came to a startling realization. I was in a negative relationship with myself. If I could not look at myself with the love I craved for, how could I see it in another?
Being More Gentle. To Myself.
It needed some form of a change. I started by being more gentle with myself; not harsh about things I could not be. It started me on a journey to find peace in my own company and in solitude; to find the same pleasure in having a coffee on my own as with someone else.
It was about being at peace with respect to where I was in my life, professionally or personally.
What Silence Taught Me
A step ahead came in this journey recently when I spent ten days at a silent retreat learning about Buddhist spiritual practices and meditation. My experience there is something I wouldn’t go into now, lest I forget what I had started out on, but what those ten days of spending time with my own thoughts, meditating, did to me was sort of detach me from my own circumstances. I could look at myself as another person and when I wasn’t so involved with who I was, I could learn to live with my flaws and my good parts in equal measure. Surprisingly, it made me a lot more appreciative and a lot less cynical in general; A pre-disposed acceptance and connection with what is around me. There is a spiritual journey I see ahead, but then it has to start with a dialogue with oneself.
I Want To Fall In Love With Me.
I don’t think I am even close to a relationship with myself. We all have those good and the bad days and the bad days affect us.
You know that thing about true love and all that jazz being all about loving someone unconditionally? I know it is a long way off, but I want to be there.
I want to begin by being in a lovely, healthy, beautiful, loving relationship with myself; start accepting all others I meet without a judgement. And as truly mentioned by the Floh member in her blog-piece whose link I started with, develop warm-heartedness for everyone around and maybe then we will all be able to see finding love as a part of a larger journey of life and not as a task that needs to be done when you are in your twenties and thirties.
Live for yourself and be happy on your own. Be Accepting. Don’t wait for someone to come and fill the gaps and the voids. Because life in its incompleteness is as beautiful a journey to make as the one in its so called completeness.
And with that ‘too philosophical’ a note even for my own taste, I shall end my monologue. 🙂
If you are on a similar self love journey, share your experiences with us in the comments below!
