Power, Autonomy, Relatedness

Why is it ALWAYS about people?

Why when I reminisce do I rush to think about the people I shared them with rather than the experience itself?

This constant fixation on attaching moments to people is beginning to diminish the moment itself in all of its beauty and uproar and it is minimizing my participation in the experience. Recalling an experience in combination with another person isn't a bad thing, there is no question that the person, or people, I was with at the time helped to shape that moment into what it was and gave it enough meaning for me to now be recalling it. But by constantly thinking of the two together I am unable to see the development I individually accrued at the time. Instead of remembering the feeling - the excitement, the spontaneity, the adventure, the tears, the heartbreak - I sit and I remember the person - my mind goes from reminiscing to missing, and all of the sudden the power from that experience is stripped and replaced by melancholy stares into the past.

I'm starting to see this divide manifested by a combination of power, autonomy, and relatedness.

As individuals, we want all of these things.

We want to feel powerful, as if the words we say and actions we do are making a difference in the world and are meaningful attributes to our own lives. We want autonomy, the ability to determine our own destiny by making independent decisions throughout our days that manage our life in a fashion we identify with. And we want relatedness, to feel close - to people, to things, to experiences - we desire a sense of belonging, one that drives us to create and maintain relationships with our surroundings.

These qualities though, when ill managed, oppose each other.

We get close, we feel loved and cared for, appreciated and desired, we feel as if we finally belong. We let that sink in, become more invested, as our walls come down with this heightened sense of security, vulnerability rises and our innate defense mechanisms, ones to protect our natural desire for power and autonomy, begin to emerge. We face this internal battle as we try to strike the perfect balance of belonging enough so that we feel loved, but not too much so that our existence as an individual who is powerful and autonomous is not threatened. And so I sit here, and I think back to my past, to that time when we did X, Y, and Z, and the cocktail of sadness, regret, and romanticization begins. Tonight I realized though that those moments are just as much mine as they are yours, as they are ours, and so I'm stealing them back. I'm aware that my vulnerability has brought me to this point of cognitive processing, and I know that my innate desire for power and autonomy drives me to maintain this perspective regarding the past. With that, I know that this mechanism may not be optimal, but it is the most primitive, and therefore, it is the most human.

The Buddhist's believe in the idea of no self, entertaining the idea that we as humans are exactly nothing, we cling to nothing and so our being is simply a stomping ground for the passing of transient experiences. I believe we have substance, and I believe that our being is composed of more than just passer-byer's, but I also believe that we give too much credit to the influencers around us, and not enough to the emptiness within us.

Rather than filling our brain with memories of us, fill it with experiences of substantial and individual growth.

I thought about it again, and I tried to facilitate what seemed like the most perfect plan to navigate this idea of non attachment and harness this animalistic desire for power and autonomy. I currently reside with, "how the hell are you supposed to detach a person from an experience when it was that person who shaped that experience for you".

And then I realized I need to go even farther back:

It's not about the person, and it's not about the moment, it's about me and my flimsy infatuation accompanied with wide eyed admiration for either the moment or the person that has landed me in a position of impoverishment. A memory, attached to a person, attached to another person - who is me.

The world romanticizes everything, we see people and places through rose colored glasses because we strive so hard to be like that Instagram couple, or have that perfect body with a perfect tan, blah blah blah. In doing this we surrender our autonomy, we give away our ability to decide for ourselves as we allow our surroundings to bear heavy weight in much of our motivations and decisions. In losing our autonomy, we lose our power as humans, we suddenly begin to feel tied down and discontented, and so what do we do? We obviously blame it on the person closest to us because:

(1) We fail to separate experience from person

(2) When do we never blame ourselves?

At this point, I know I can't go back and detach my experiences from the people they were shared with. Moving forward though, I can protect my right to make my own decisions, manage my own life, and feel powerful as an individual while maintaining a cohesive and consistent sense of self as I strive to eliminate the romanticization of expectations brought on by societal influences. In doing so I will walk into an experience aware of my own personal and individual values, I will bring my perspective to these experiences, and then when sharing my life with another I will still maintain my oneness. I will operate within moments for myself, even those shared with others, they will be mine, not because I'm a cold-hearted brat who doesn't want to let anyone in, but because in order to maintain my own identity I must learn the operational balance of humanity and self actualization as I flirt with the border of existence.