Me

I spoke sharply to my wife yesterday because of something she said that made me feel a certain way.  As we separated in silent anger, I discovered a sentence floating through my mind...something about her not having interest in me, in how I am feeling these days.  The fact was, however, that she had stopped by specifically to see me.

• "Do you know how hard I am working or what I give up to help you?"
• "Why am I the one who always has to be flexible and join in what you are doing?"

• "When is the last time you asked me how I was doing?"

• "Why doesn't anyone call me?"

• "...it seems like people don't really care, or even want to know about me.  Nobody really has time...for me.  Everyone is too busy thinking about themselves ...."

Each of us has personal versions of questions like this, don't we?  At times they lay low, staying submerged under our denial or even our effort to keep them tamped down.  At other times, they shoot out of the smallest cracks in our shells with surprising velocity and at unanticipated moments.  What is going on?  What is reflected in these sentences...especially when they are no more true than the one I was settling on above?

I woke up with questions like this today...but I realize I've been perfecting them for a while now...justifying the integrity of them by keeping track of certain things that support them (and leaving the ones that don't aside).  They are obviously self-centered.  They obviously reflect something I have discovered that I am holding on to, that requires something of others to take care of...me.  But, such sentences do point to something. ...and therefore they are useful to acknowledge.  I have learned (the hard way) to pay attention to them when I can.

As I tried to do this, I realized that (among other things) my sense of personal worth has become in need of validation.  So, I was accusing the world (and my wife) in order to gets its attention.  But, do I really need to be validated?  Well...yes.  I do.  But, by her?  Or, by you?  No.

So, the question remains, what is going on inside me?  What I really need is to stop and reconsider the forces at work in me right now that allow me to translate the validation I do need from requiring that others come through for me...to make me feel better about myself.  I have noticed, over time, that it is the inability (or, more likely, the unwillingness) to stop doing everything I have ended up doing to feel good about myself and ask the question, what validates me?  You?  What I do?  ...what or who does validate me, then?

This blog has well-traveled answers to these questions.  ...so, it isn't the answer that is elusive; it is the slow and subtle shift in where I seek the answer.  And, I need to stop...to be still in order to re-discover my true source of being.  Even while immersed in truth and good ideas, to not stop is harmful to my being...and hurtful to those around me.  I am, at times, surprised that this is still necessary, but I suspect I am not changed by ideas nearly as much as I am changed by the habits of stopping all the activity that can so undetectably infiltrate my life and relating with those ideas to God and those around me in very personal ways.  After all, they are not ideas or activities, they are people with whom I need to actually relate.