It is not good for man to be alone. -God
Some years back, a man whom I had known for a long
time was describing me to some new acquaintances of ours. It was all very
positive and complimentary, but with one small problem: he wasn’t describing me. In fact, the more he waxed
eloquent about the attributes, gifting, and talents, of Monte Wilson, the more
invisible I felt. All I could do was sit there thinking, “You really
don’t know me.”
A friend responds to me the same way I would if I
were seeing and sensing myself through the mind of my friend. In other words,
he acts as a mirror that reflects the image of how I see and experience myself.
He sees what I know to be true of myself, both good and not so good, senses how
I experience life. In other words, true friends are psychologically
visible to each other.
Of course, friends also help us discover the, heretofore,
unseen aspects of our self. You’ve had this happen before, when a friend
complimented or criticized you about something and you instantly intuited that,
yes, “That’s me!”
Certainly, the mere fact that we are (relatively) visible
to someone doesn’t mean that we are going to be good friends. However, there
can be no true emotional connection and companionship where there is little or
no visibility. How can you say," I love you," if you are blind to my
“you”? Am I really going to believe someone loves me who doesn’t Get Me,
get who I am (“warts and all”)?
In our quest for realizing our true self and what
we were placed here on earth to do, we know by intuition and experience that
such cannot be accomplished alone, that autonomy and isolation is the path to
disintegration, not wholeness. It’s not just visibility that we desire. We also
have an innate need to love and to be loved. While there are many reason why
this is so, two jump out at me:
External validation and
affirmation “You really are you!” However
self-aware I am, however brutally honest with myself that I seek to be about
the nature of my true self, I need feedback as to the veracity of my
self-evaluation. Caveat: I am not
referring to a craving for the approval of others, as if I were asking
permission to be myself. I am referring to the acknowledgment that my
evaluation of my self is, indeed, accurate.
Mutual support I know that I need the love, gifts, and wisdom, of others to make my
journey in this life, just as others need mine. I instinctually know that it is
neither healthy nor wise to be “alone.” Think back to the stories many of
us grew up reading: Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable, Frodo and
Samwise, The Three Musketeers, Harry with Ron and Hermione, Robin Hood and his
Merry Men, King David and his Mighty Men, and Jesus and the Twelve. One of the
things that draw us to such stories is that we too long for a Band of Brothers.
Being alone is not good for us. We know this. So,
what are we actively doing to seek out or maintain the health of our present
relationships? What are we doing about discovering who our Band of Brothers is:
those men and women with whom we make ourselves visible and available, and to
whom we offer our love and support, in their quests? What steps are we taking
to develop meaningful relationships?
Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2015
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