I Am Not You

We say we value individuality. We swear we love and accept our partners, parents, children, siblings and friends for being exactly who they are. And yet. Time and time again we get lost in the belief, in the expectation, that they should be just like us, or we should be just like them. Why can’t they just see this thing we the way we do? Because they were never intended to see it that way. We were.

When there is no space for me being me and you being you we lose sight of each other. We are being sucked down the rabbit hole of disconnection and resentment. We are missing the very reason we were brought together in the first place. We are vastly missing the point of relationships. So often the very things that attracted us to our partners, or friends, in the beginning, the yin and yang of it all, the balance we experienced, gets chipped away by our egos. Ego demands rigidity. Competition is never far behind because one of us now needs to be right, and in order for one of us to be right one of us must be wrong. We are now on opposing teams. There is simply not enough room for us both inside the space of our egos.

I’m not you and you’re not me, and once we surrender to that we are finally free to genuinely celebrate each other. We are free to understand each other, to truly see and hear each other. We are free to learn what we are meant to learn from each other, because differing perspectives is the essence of a vibrant life. I got the job of being me, and while I am, hands down, my favorite person ever, one of me is more than enough. You got the job of being you. Do that, with every single thing you’ve got. Do that fiercely and without apologies. You are not them and once they get that a lot more will make sense. And if they never get it? You will have gotten it. And that was always the point.