ATTACHMENT AND INSECURITY

Part I : Attachment

We all want a feeling of being with someone who sticks by us, through time and tides. Where the bond and affection grows not only stronger but more meaningful and wholesome. We crave the feeing of being understood that our human condition isn’t something alien, that someone thinks we are worthy of living and being loved and cared for. Are we asking for a lot? We are just asking that one person to be there. Not necessarily a romantic partner, but even just a friend or stranger. Who upholds us when we are weak and feeble and fragile. 

What I notice and through unbiased analysis on the way people function, including myself. I get attached quickly and so do many people. Sometimes faster than the speed of light, well not literally but metaphorically . I understand that my notion of feeling good that somebody has done something for me was very distorted, because I had never been accustomed or exposed to the vast majority of that generosity that prevails in the world, that any little and paltry act of thoughtfulness and benevolence meant they care deeply for us or that I was somehow special. 

As I am growing fortunately still, I understand through my experiences with the encounter I have had with people, and come to realize that just because somebody thinks you are noteworthy or somebody says so, or does deeds of kindness doesn’t really mean that they have seen you for who you really are. We are love and care deprived, a void that can’t be filled and yearns for more and more, never to be satiated, and even the slightest hint of compassionate gestures make us instantly hooked on to the person. We started blowing all of their minute actions out of proportion. We put them on a pedestal in our lives.

We give them so much power and right to determine our state of being and while the other person is totally unaware of how highly regarded we consider them. There is nothing wrong with putting value into people, letting them know how appreciated they are. But one must do it in a way that doesn’t make us dependent on them. Or make us latch onto them like a leech. 

When we get attached to them, we think about them as a part of us. We want them to behave in the ways that are coherent and congruent to our happiness. We unknowingly want to take their autonomy, and why you may ask ? Insecurity.

Part II : Insecurity 

Everyone has it. Some have it bigger than their ego, others lesser. For some it’s their flaws they consider to the physical self, for some it’s more of a hidden psychological state. Some don’t let them impede most daily life functioning. Others can’t overcome them. 

We constantly feel that we aren’t enough that’s because we will never will be, because there is no perfect self to look up to believe there is no template how to be one, because as you better so do other people. You can control the degree of your competence, not others. They’ll keep developing and there is nothing you can do to stop them. And you shouldn’t because in the attempt to do so. You miss out on yourself. We need to realize that someone will always be better than us, and that someone will be better than them too. We can’t have all the qualities and excel at them. What we can do is try to grow in the ones we think are important. 

Just because a particular person likes something, you’d not really want to change that about yourself. You’d want to do it even if they didn’t like it. Doing it should push you. Not the person who proposes the idea. Because in the pursuit to become all that one specific person or set of people want from you, you’ll fail miserably. Why? You can’t possibly be all that they want and second, you can’t be the best at all of them. It’s your choice to pick the ones that make you feel like an overall contented human.