Just Believe

A few weeks ago I had a friend ask me how she could focus on controllable things in her life while not ignoring or getting sad about the uncontrollable things in her life.

For example, you can control when you purchase a home, you save, clear up your credit, talk to a financial advisor and a realtor, get a loan, etc.  But you cannot control when you will find someone to share that home with. 

It's an interesting situation, basically the question is - how do you not lose hope for those desires which are good, but are kind of out of your immediate control?

I don't feel qualified to answer that question as in my experience I have constantly wavered.  Twice now I have thought I found what I was looking for only to realize that it wasn't.  I have had my bumps and bruises along the way and things have "blown up in my face".  Each time there is a disappointment or an upset, I falter.  I can tell you that not having hope is debilitating.  It makes you pull in to yourself, makes you unable to bear anything good and happy in the lives of others because you feel like you'll never have that for yourself.  It's undesirable, so I can see why my friend would like to avoid that.

I answered as best I could, not sure if it helped at all.  I later took the same question to a different friend of mine.  Basically he said, "just believe."  Which seems so easy to say but harder to do.  However, I've been thinking about it, I've thought of belief as something that someone just has, for me, believing is a struggle while others don't even bat an eyelash.  Believing, like happiness and so many other abstract things, comes down to a decision.  You choose whether to believe or not. 

As I have thought about it more, I realize that I apply different levels of faith to different things.  In a month, I will need a new roommate, there are no prospects for a roommate at this time, but I'm not worried, I know someone will come along.  Why can I believe so strongly that that situation will work out, but I falter when it comes to believing that I will find someone to be with?

I met up with my friend again last week and amended my answer to her.  I still stood by my original answer, but added to it that it takes faith, it takes choosing to believe because we want to believe.  I also told her that people are attracted to confidence and to people who make them feel good about themselves.  (I know that I can't be the only one who wants to hang out with someone who genuinely makes me feel good about myself).  It may take some time to feel reciprocation from people, but eventually, if you make it your goal to make others feel good, without expectations of return (because people can sometimes sense that), then you'll start to get it back.  Maybe not from everyone, but from those who matter most.

Always take "advice" I give with a grain of salt.  Remember that no two people are the same, there's no set "formula" for finding someone to date (or getting them to date you).  I'm still figuring things out just like the next person and to be honest, I don't know how I get from one boyfriend to the next.   But even if I'm wrong, and focusing on making other people feel good about themselves doesn't help you to find someone to date and possibly marry, how could you really go wrong? You'll still be a person people like to be around.

You are chocolate, lots of people LOVE chocolate - I don't

I had a revelation today, a "500 Days of Summer" type revelation. 



Found at http://www.btchflcks.com/2011/08/95-minutes-of-pure-torture-500-days-of.html





I've only seen the movie once and I'd hate to give spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen, but at the end of the movie, our leading male character has a revelation.  I think that sometimes when we break up with someone our mind plays a nasty trick on us and reminds us of only the good times.  We suffer for days, maybe even weeks (but I pray to God not months) where we remember our relationship at it's best.



Found At http://www.thecinemasource.com/blog/movies/500-days-of-summer/



Anyway, during the course of the movie (again - might be spoilers) Summer tries to tell Tom that things weren't always rainbows and sunshine.  There were things about their relationship that just didn't work.  Tom is resistant to see this, but in the end he does.  In a way, it's like the Sixth Sense of dating movies.  There are clues all along the way, a truth you've chosen not to see and then suddenly in a light bulb moment you uncover the truth you already knew.

I'm not saying that my little revelation made everything magically better or anything..  It was a brief moment, but an eye opening one.  While I am fully aware that all relationships have their issues that must be worked out (or the relationship abandoned) I realized today that maybe sometimes one person can see it's not working while the other one thinks everything is going well.

There can be differences between two people, such as communication styles, sense of humor, values, etc. that can't really be overlooked.  But "in the moment" it's easy to ignore them.  These things don't make one person right or one person wrong and they don't mean that both people can't stay relatively the same and make it work...with someone else.  The worst thing about these...they are things that can't really be changed just because you want to be with someone. 

I am a storyteller - there is nothing wrong with this, many people enjoy this aspect of my personality.  But today I had the revelation that some people might not like stories.  I was thinking about it today, why a certain ex can have long conversations with someone else, but not seem to be able to have them with me.  And then I remembered a time when I was "telling a story" and he wasn't listening.  I kept thinking how I must have bored him with my communication style.  There was a Hollywood  barrage of memories of other times where I had barely noticed he wasn't very interested in my story, no matter how interesting I was making it.  But I don't know how else to communication with people.  It's one of those things that is just a part of you, something that can't change, but luckily doesn't need to be changed. 

It's a matter of mixing the right ingredients together.  I wouldn't want to be with someone who just endures the length of time from the beginning of the story until the end, because that means they are just enduring their time with me. 

I deserve better than that, they deserve better than that.  More importantly, I've had more than that...Now I just need to practice what I preach and have hope that I can have that again.