we’re all directors in our lives, with a story or certain outcomes in mind, we play a part. external circumstances can change the scenes at times but what roles we play depends largely on us. it gets complicated because our plots involve other people. everyone we know seem to “serve a role” in our movie. there are easily replaceable extras who seem to have no consequences on our story, there are those who are significant enough to cause some wrinkles but leave no permanent damage or improvement, and then there are those special important ones that seem to have the potential to change the story. these roles can be of great honor but also of great responsibility. a certain kind of commitment, implied or stated, seems to go along with it. after all we are taking “a risk” of letting this person impact our lives. we want the “good stuff “this person has to offer (or what fits in our story line), and we’re willing to put up with some nuisances. however, significant potential derailments seem to threaten our story. and at this point there seems to be a win or lose situation. to state the obvious but frequently forgotten caveat: this other person is also running their own movie. if our movies are not perfectly aligned, we have to split or one of us has to lose.
the dream of everlasting love and friendships and continued intimacy often starts with the fantasy of perfectly aligned goals… a shared dream. some of us think we are realistic enough to say “i know it won’t be perfect” but there is a relative deal-breaker-threshold. this shared dream or expectation is not always false. it’s just that we change and grow and our scenes change and grow and that snapshot image of a shared dream does not always evolve with us.
as we grow older and incur more experiences, it is realistic that our image of the future changes. in fact if we keep growing, it is imperative that the image changes, because our dreams are bound by our current experience, thought and vocabulary, we can envision a future but do we want to limit it by our current limitations?
when we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, our needs evolve. when we are without food and shelter, all we want is that. but once we have food and shelter, we want love and belonging. so it is not uncommon to say all i want is basics, and then we change that requirement as we grow and our situations evolves.
there’s a paradox in the idea that there is no end to wanting, yet if we solidify what we want we become stagnant. a creative process is called for in which we don’t stop growing but we’re able to not get derailed by cravings and attachments that impede us.
so when we have others in our lives who seem to serve a role in our pre-determined movie, it is not a surprise that if the movie does not evolve, we will be requiring great sacrifices of our “others.” our relationship will become transactional, the other will become an object that serves a purpose. “i need you to fulfill this need of mine, and if you don’t i don’t want you in my life.”
the idea that i am conveying is that a blind adherence to a rigid storyline is not helpful to us or to our “others.” it is a fear-based clinging to an old idea that seemed good enough and safe enough at the time we dreamed it up. but to forget our real in-the-moment aspirations because we are blinded by an old label is a disservice to our creative potentials and binds us and our others in a stifling place of obligation and need.
© The Paradox of Being. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of written material, ideas, and images without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited. Links to the original content on this blog may be provided.
the paradox of being 