As human beings, we tend to have a certain perception of ourselves as a homogenous body of people. This perception is generally not inward-facing, 'self-centred', or at least 'self-orientated' beings. We are drunk on the mirage that we are outward facing beings that live for love, passion, happiness, unity and community. But there is a fundamental omission in this stance, that is - not taking in to account the question of what attracts us to those things. This article is for everybody who has ever asked the question "why me" or "what did I do to deserve this?" or who has ever felt in any way that they have been treated wrongly or unjustly by others. There is a skewed reality of the human psyche that, if not correctly understood, could lead to self deprecation through lack of awareness. The substratum of the social psyche is almost unrecognisable, in stark comparison to it's veneer.
There is a very definitive point about the gregarious nature of human beings. One which is not commonly or frequently identified. Most people spend their lives believing that "who they are" as a person, how they act and what they do, are the social pinpoints of their popularity. People often misconstrue being liked or disliked by others as a direct reflection of who they are as a person. The truth is, however, that human beings are primordially 'inwards' by nature, meaning that every single one of us gravitates towards the things that make us feel good inside, and away from the things that do the opposite. This gravitational pull towards 'good feelings', is applied directly to all aspects of life - who our friends are, what we do for a living, where we go and what our hobbies and opinions are - i.e. the things that perpetuate and validate ourselves. Most times, however, we will perceive the object of that feeling (i.e. a person or place) as a wholly, self-contained 'good' object, as opposed to the service it provides us for selfish gain. We are subconsciously geared towards that which is pleasing, and away from that which is deemed toxic.
Born on this premise is the development of how social beings interact with one another. What drives us to and away from the people we associate with is primarily based on our egos. In layman's terms, the things that supplement or impair our egos. Different people are driven by different stimulants: money, power, wealth, good looks, good humour, intelligence, love, and so on and so forth, but the thing about the people who possess these things, and our attraction to them, is that it is not the person with the intelligence and humour that we like, it's the feeling that their intelligence gives us when we engage in a witty debate. The incredible feeling inside released thorough endorphins when they make us laugh, or even how good it feels inside to see them smile, that we are absolutely intoxicated by. It is our ego saying: "this makes me feel good, so I like it. I want this as often as possible, and if it's denied from me, I want it even harder." It is not us loving them, it is us loving the part of ourselves that they either provide or reinforce.
Not too many nights ago, I was lying in bed, wide awake, at 4am. I was trying to piece together a puzzle in my mind, when it hit me. An epiphany. It could've been one of the greatest discoveries I had made to date. I was trying to understand why certain people feel love for those by whom it is unreciprocated, the times people have felt this for me, the times I have felt it for others and the times it had been mutual, and I hit upon the absolute crest of this phenomenon. I discovered that people fall in love with those who invest interest in them. With those who care to ask them what they think about the colour purple, do they eat spaghetti on tuesdays and why do they like dogs? It seems so simple, yet everyone who I shared this thought with agreed that indeed, it had been accurate for them too. The reason is that people are constantly seeking egoic endorsement and self-ward dividends, they are constantly looking to tell their story and express themselves. Once a person identifies with, or cares to indulge in your story, this is when we mentally orchestrate a pseudo-mutual nexus that is commonly misappropriated as love (*simplified). It is so flattering, and humbling at the same time, for a person to show a genuine, deep-rooted and vested interest in you. Your sense of self becomes legitimised and corroborated through this source of interest, so we forge a bond with said source. We are important for this brief time. Of course we cry love. The source of which has become a self-aggrandising auxiliary device. I then understood why there were times in my life and past, where people had felt a much greater connection with me than I did for them, because I had spent a great body of time heavily invested in these people, while these people did not care to do the same for me, thus, I was unable to identify a mutual bond.
Friendship is a primary example of the propagation of this inward-'good feeling' that we so direly crave. Friends provide you with love, care, an open ear and an honest tongue. These are all 'services' which perpetually recondition the ego to be bound to said person. Not only is it selfish, it's also selfless and outward facing which inadvertently becomes inwards again. Being there for others, in turn, feels good and fortifies the manacle between two bodies, substantiating ourselves and satisfying the need we have to love others.
There are people we meet who we just 'don't have a good feeling about.' It may be nothing they have said or done, but based on this 'gut feeling' we are deterred from such people. But we are driven by the inbound sensation. Not the external reality. Truthfully, our perception of reality is heavily distorted, and skewed by our sense of self. This is why we often judge people too quickly, before taking deliberate care to know or understand them, because we are deterred by the domestic disservice caused as a byproduct of a person's words or actions. Or simply how they hold themselves. The need to judge or berate said persons is impelled by a feeling of indemnity we arrive at when we fortify ourselves through negating that which is not 'me'. This has no baring on the other, but limits our ability to connect boundlessly. We are incarcerated by our sense of self, and slaves to it's fickle will.
This is the same principle that evokes social groups cemented by common elements. The rich favour the rich, classes tend to fraternise therein, and ethnic and racial groups are heavily segregated. People with similar interests and intellectual capabilities do not divaricate their social setting. This is because we subconsciously aspire towards that which is, in essence, US. That way, we constantly and consistently reinforce and immortalise our self perception, inadvertently validating ourselves through the company we seek. This is why Rumi says "the beauty you see in me is a reflection of you." Because, truly, what you love in someone else is appeasing to a place in yourself.
While this may seem like a superficial or shallow perception of humanity, awareness is the very tool that can help save us from self-victimisation in the social environment. We are propelled into a feeling of inadequacy whenever castigated or subject to reproach. Often times, this weighs on our perception of 'who we are'. We question ourselves and our validity. I've seen first hand, people feeling bad about themselves because their opinions or actions were challenged, or others did not agree with them or see their point of view. This is the precise thing that awareness will ultimately nullify. The intertwinement of 'who we are' with 'what people think', since what people think is really who THEY are. Through this, we can learn to become comfortable in our own skin, in knowing that our entire being is not compromised every time somebody disagrees with or dislikes us, but simply that we provide an egoic service that befits some people better than others. Or at least in different ways. And every ego is entirely bespoke. Even the person with the most fascist, misogynistic, racist, myopic and ignorant opinions can find at least one person to agree with them. And what do you bet that they love that person? And gravitate towards them? Even without knowing anything else about them, their past sins and success, or their characteristics. That becomes secondary and almost irrelevant, since their alignment to your opinion becomes primary, and falsely emblematic of their entirety. They feel good about it and so do you. These two parties reinforce and reflect one another, and act as magnets towards each other thusly. This is the very clog in the wheel of social decorum.
At this point, you have two options. One of them leads to peace and sanity, one of them leads to a perpetual sense of inadequacy and loss of consciousness. 1 - Align yourself with everybody. Agree with whatever people dictate, and surely, you will be 'liked.' Do not challenge what is said, concede to the majority and bite your tongue. 2 - Understand that a persons need for you to agree with them is a reflection of themselves. Not you. Their feelings towards you, which are in either direction predicated on an allegiance with or against them, is a reflection of their feelings towards themselves. A person who does not require validation, will never feel invalidated by you. This allows room for truthfulness and sincerity.
I was recently talking to a friend who had gone out to a friend of a friend's party. She had come home very upset by the way this person had treated her. She was very hurt by the disregard and belittlement shown towards her. We engaged in some discussion and we both came to the fair conclusion that the way she was treated was not at all based on who she was as a person, since the accused had never met my friend and knew nothing about her, but based on an explicit feeling inside of her self - anger? jealousy? threat? discomfort? unfamiliarity? anything you can name, something that aggravated her ego, and caused my friend to ask the question of why she was 'disliked' by this person, failing to understand that this person did not dislike her, but simply disliked the feeling inside of herself. This is something inbuilt within all of us, and the phenomenon behind most capricious social conflict. But enlightenment and maturity may hopefully teach us not to succumb so easily to our egoic impulses, that we ultimately alienate people because they are not aligned with our sense of self. This will aggrandise the eminence of the ego and cause us to lack humility and develop a superiority complex. This is why celebrities and people of a certain clout tend to develop superiority complexes. They are so often reinforced and agreed with, that their ego's are ennobled and their sense of reality becomes disproportionate and distorted. It then becomes difficult to accept a challenge to this disproportionate sense of self, because it is so widely eulogised. The ego lives in a constant state of self-perpetuating hedonism and glorification. The 'good feeling' is aggrandised and ultimately fully desensitised. Everything good doesn't feel good any more, which ultimately leads to numbness and the loss of aliveness. This is where we hear the saying "too much of a good thing can you kill you." Aligning yourself with that which is outside yourself will ultimately stabilise your centre. This is consciousness.
Because of our inclination towards the self, we have constructed a life where we are surrounded by people who make us feel good, as opposed to the qualities they posses as a person. We are enslaved by this commitment to the self. Practicing abstinence from that feeling can be extremely enlightening. Conversing with somebody we normally wouldn't converse with, or spending time with somebody who operates dissimilarly to us gives us great foresight. It allows us the ability to see others for who they are, as opposed to the service they provide us. Those flickering moments are extremely beautiful, when one can actually look into somebody's soul and genuinely be fond of it, without it having to serve us any selfish purpose. I believe that is the window to true love. The point at which we step out of ourselves, step out of our self-constructed 'roles', and actually see people for the first time, free of archetypal social constructs, and free of the egos need to correct or override an alien perspective. Everything is not self. Open your mind to that which is the other. When people open up to you, they present to you the looking-glass into their souls. Be humble enough to honour their bid. When we listen without the intention to talk, i mean genuinely listen, when we speak without the intention to appear a certain way. When we surrender our ego, let go of the pretence, allow ourselves to feel belittled or offended, and still have no ill-feeling toward the person who caused it, we dehumanise the ego and allow love to dwell within us. Because love and the ego can not coexist. One will always negate the other. The ego is the opposite to love, since the ego can only put itself first, bound by it's own selfish and whimsical impulses.
This then begs the question, if we are magnetically attracted towards that which makes us feel good, then why are we so inveigled by the people who hurt us? That is a false sense of love, but actually possesses the greatest hold. As most insecurities do. Based on the aforementioned, it would be safe to assume that if something doesn't make us feel 'good', we'd be deterred from it. But, of course, the human psyche is not facile by nature. In opposite sex relationships (and sometimes same-sex), this is where the grey area lies. The ego no longer says "that doesn't feel good, i'll be on my way", it now regresses to an elementary phase of being and says, "why don't I make YOU feel good?" which is perhaps a stronger desire all together, than our own desire to feel good. This is because instinctively, if we aren't making others feel good, we tend to question ourselves. We feel belittled and 'who we are' is undermined. since it is not satisfactory to somebody else, it is no longer satisfactory to ourselves, and thus we berate ourselves and disinherit the self-determined 'good feeling'. The ego then ties an attachment to this object. It is usually a person who has rejected us (and therefore our sense of self). Our egos designated métier is to rectify that, by searching for means to launder itself. That is why we blindly cohere to that person and often times miscalculate this as love. It isn't love. In my (very humble) opinion, true love manifests itself when the need to correct the egos scorn is removed. When there are no games, when the soul is laid bare in front of each other, and it is beautiful and enticing in all it's flaws. Whether it hurts you or heals you. Whether it aligns with your sense of self or not. Because the self is thusly relegated, in favour of something more important.
Ultimately, the way people treat each other is almost always based on the self, and never the 'other.' Therefore, it is detrimental and emotionally damaging for the other to take this as a challenge on who they are, as opposed to understanding the internal and ephemeral nature of social inclination.
'That which I love is never really you, but always me.'
