I have always been told that, “You should learn to take care of yourself, only then you can take care of others,” or “You shall love yourself first, only then you know how to love others.”
For the past 20 years when I was still stuck in between my reality and illusion, I could not understand what is important or how to structure my own real world out of my dreams. At this point, you might think that I was just a naive and ignorant teenager with no much of knowledge and experience about life simply because I had never come to any hardship or just being unambitious. The fact is, I have been struggling between others opinions (more like instructions) and my own desire or way in doing things. Even today, there are times when I am confused, doubting my worthiness, and clueless of what I want. As someone who was born to be an idealist, I have always imagined how everything should be or shall be. Sadly, everything I have imagined has always denied, discouraged and criticized by my closest people in the world before I graduated from high school.
“You cannot learn music because you need to focus on study!” snapped my parents whenever I wanted to achieve something that would interfere (in their opinion) my study time. Probably because they did not have to chance to further study or gave up in studying and they think their lives would not be as hard as right now if only if they had studied extremely well. Therefore, they want to stop me from making the same mistake like they did.
However, they never thought that they would take away all of my happiness and my rights to have childhood by restricting me to do something I could not find anything else but scare. I felt miserable and yet you told me all of this is for my own good. Then, how can you expect me to understand what is self-love? Is it what I felt now - afraid and unhappy? The problem with love is that if you have not being shown through feelings, you will never understand what is it. That goes for self-confident and trust.
I did not know that love, confidence and trust are sharing the same theory until this morning. I was talking to a friend, whom I somehow thought that he will trust me, about doing business and investment. As from someone who is from business family background, he is interested in investment and partnership. Then, a thought came to my mind and I asked, “If I ever need a partnership for a business, can I find you?” “Sorry, I would like to find partnership myself,” he replied. Obviously, he doesn’t trust me. Frankly, I was a bit shocked (but I hid my emotion successfully, as usual.) After our conversation, I went back to my seat which is only 3 steps away from his. I meditated upon what is trust, then a question popped out in my mind: Did you ever show trust to him? I opened my eyes as if I was awaken by a sudden noise.
No, I did not. Never really had done it genuinely.
Not to trust someone with my share has always been my shield to protect me from being hurt. That is what I used to believe. Now, I see it, actually, is my revenge towards those who rejected, tricked, doubt, looked down on and used me. Why? Because I realized that whenever I discovered that someone did those to me, I would feel relieved that I did not trust and share with that someone. Never mind. I didn’t do anything good for him/her before. It is a forwarded revenge towards them.
As I have grown older, I realized that most of the precious friendships I hoped to be successful were ruined because of me unable to trust and share; be generous. (To be entirely honest, I just figured it out gradually since last 2 months.) It is really sad but history is history. The only thing left to do in order to amend is recognize this as a mistake and stop making it anymore.
Of course, there are people somewhere out there, maybe they are just beside me, are not trustworthy. Still, there are still someone who is worth to be relied on and to share with.
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