MckinleyWoods

Over the years I have learned that: (a) perpetual victimization is a defining malady in any failed relationship personal or business and (b) our emotional imprint has everything to do with any relationship.

Despite what we have accomplished technologically, we still have ambiguous notions as to what makes us happy and furthermore what happiness looks like. We have reached the crossroads. Suspicious of anything remotely better than what we have experienced we continue to listen to perpetual fears of failed strategies. As though only one concept or one guru has the Ozmanian percept to activate us into the way we think we “ought to be.” But we actually slide into procedures without thinking, where any activity becomes tantamount to the precarious nature of staring blindly into the television screen or the next internet relationship or the half-empty glass of personal identity fatigue. We seek ways to “safely” appear to be anyone other than our real true self. Nebulous clouds of aggrandizing self pity loathe everything we touch. But alas, who we really are rises at some point disguised to ourselves as another’s failings. Giving some semblance of false validity to our sense of, “I am okay and you are not.”

A popular refrain is, “I always pick the wrong person.” The problem is not the other person. It is undeniably you! You and you alone have the ability to decide what type of relationship you want.

A friend visited my home one evening. Following a wonderful dinner and conversation she asked me to help her retrieve items from her van. Braced against the passenger door was a tri-colored shopping bag of magazines, work related items, food, and clothing. “Why?” I asked incredulously. Her explanation seemed well rehearsed. “This is my runaway bag,” she replied closing the door.

Why she needed a runaway bag was and is (since she redeems its use frequently) is more than an apt metaphor. She has had the bag for years. When a relationship develops (which is often) rather than challenge her fears, she escapes to a primeval place of refuge, ignoring the indelible imprint causing her distressed patterns of behavior.

Why we do the things we do has taught me to draw parallel responses following executive and personal coaching sessions. For some, a relationship is a sprint, others, a slow and steady march. And still others a series of static processes. Which is better depends on our honor to the self.

Each step launches us into recurring images of behaviors inviolate of the order we ultimately desire. We want relationships. We want our happy ending. While unknowingly we lull ourselves into fearful reposes of barely good enough relationships. The undeserving great is elusive but not impossible. And not everyone in relationships is unhappy or deceptive.

Honor. A word used as often as I love you. Its import is frequently lost to the fear of changing the self. Or another word, the illusive, security. The “I want someone to take care of me.” Think of that phrase beyond materially.

Hence we sacrifice real happiness for the façade of easy and status. Forgetting that in the end we are all puppets and our best hope is to decipher the emotions and logic of the puppet and puppeteer.