{"id":4406,"date":"2023-08-13T22:24:54","date_gmt":"2023-08-13T22:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/?p=4406"},"modified":"2023-08-13T22:24:54","modified_gmt":"2023-08-13T22:24:54","slug":"chasing-shadows-gratefully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/chasing-shadows-gratefully\/","title":{"rendered":"Chasing shadows, gratefully…"},"content":{"rendered":"

For most of my life, I’ve chased after intangible things that I thought I needed.<\/strong> Whether it was fatherly praise or some kind of motherly love, I quietly sought reassurance that I was worthwhile, valuable, and cherished. It didn’t matter if the granters were my real parents or, later on, proxy people whom I’d adopted to take their places. It was a reflex that I didn’t even know I was playing out.<\/p>\n

By the time I reached thirty both my parents had died, and whatever conversations we might have had would remain unfinished, capping-off relationships with each other that had been thin, confusing, and largely unhappy.<\/p>\n

Thirty seemed to be the age when I felt the most physically and emotionally charged and capable. By that time, I’d become a part-owner and co-manager in a small software company. I was learning my craft as an artist and designer in the high-tech sector, and also learning a little about business and a lot about the human nature of the people around me.<\/p>\n

While I built up my own abilities and forged my own life, I still needed to fill some gaping holes inside myself. They were my unsatisfied yearnings to have a supportive father figure, a nuturing, communicative mother figure, and to fill some family role without bitter feelings of resentment ruining the joy.<\/p>\n

So, from my thirties through my fifties, I found bosses who gave me guidance, training, and praise, and a few colleagues whom I could help or counsel. Sometimes my work-teams felt like a new family.<\/p>\n

When some career coach tells you not to treat your workmates like family, it may be prudent advice, but it’s only practical to those who don’t have gaps in their life where real family ought to have been. For me, during my first job out of college, working with people who’d become my friends, the dysfunction and misunderstandings that arose inside that group appeared to me like problems I thought I could help solve. My problems stemmed from not identifying others as the sources of dysfunction, and thinking I needed to take on some responsibility for finding solutions. Sometimes however, it really is someone else’s fault and their problems need to be dealt with by themselves, or just somebody else who isn’t you.<\/p>\n

When I felt something resonate with a new person, I’d find myself wanting to connect, to bond, to provide support, or feel needed. With anyone in whom I’ve confided my life stories or shown some affection, those moments were always real, genuine, never contrived. The people I placed as my proxy parents or confidants, they earned my real love and gratitude. But my need to connect, the kernel that continued to influence my behaviour, came from the need to reconfirm my worth in some way.<\/p>\n

After the age of fifty, I really tended to shy away from attention and crowds, but ironically I still wanted to be acknowledged in some way. “See me, hear me, feel me, touch me” as the song goes, but maybe don’t get too close… I think that must be a classic introvert behavior. But the pull to put myself in a familial identity or to assign that to a colleague seems less powerful now that I’m 57. It’s just a faint gravitational influence, instead of a strong magnetic pull.<\/p>\n

But I have learned something from each friend, colleague, or mentor, directly or indirectly, and for that I’m grateful.<\/p>\n

I like the saying “you might be done with the past, but the past ain’t done with you”. It’s a blunt way of saying that life can be circular and recurring, looping your dumb, distracted ass around and around through similar patterns until you learn what you need to change. Poets use rhyme, storytellers repeat themes, and composers replay refrains, all to show us some pattern they need us to see again and again, until we finally recognize that there’s a pattern being repeated. That’s the point at which you can finally perceive the real race you’re running, and try to jump out of the wheel ruts.<\/p>\n

But getting to clarity and objectivity is slow, and the work takes years to clear away the fog of childhood issues. It’s like you can’t see the big picture of your own behaviour until you’re well past it, look back on it. Hindsight is 20\/20.<\/p>\n

It’s not about getting to that thing that’s always out of your reach. It’s more about getting the clarity to see it for what it is. It’s about reminding yourself to let go of that elusive thing, because it’s probably an illusion. You could just be chasing your own shadow.<\/p>\n

You can’t catch it, but once you realize what you’re really running for, it won’t matter so much.<\/p>\n

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For most of my life, I’ve chased after intangible things that I thought I needed. Whether it was fatherly praise or some kind of motherly love, I quietly sought reassurance that I was worthwhile, valuable, and cherished. It didn’t matter if the granters were my real parents or, later on, proxy people whom I’d adopted … Continue reading Chasing shadows, gratefully…<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-4406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memoirs","tag-reflection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4407,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4406\/revisions\/4407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}