I got this from one of my "kids" from Training. I simply love it. It's kinda been posted at Hundun's page too. Jon (the Angel hehe) comments:
"This is where Family and True Friends come in! No matter how many people you meet or how many people come and go into our lives...you will always have your family and true friends to come home to anytime and anywhere you need them! So, stop looking and make them most of what you have!
Any significant other shouldn't be the air you breathe! There's more to a girlfriend or boyfriend..there's more to life!! Naks!!!"
Read on...
No one else
by Mark J. Macapagal
I was talking to a friend of mine and she was ruing the fact that it seemed like no matter how much she went out, or how much fun she had, she would ultimately come home and there would be this sense of emptiness. As if she had just had another evening of fun but in the end, it was really rather meaningless.
Now I had been going through something similar. As some of you readers may know, I've spent the past half year or so in the rebuilding of my life, which naturally includes dating a number of women. All of this has been going well. I have great friends, met some great women, but after all was said and done, I had that same feeling of emptiness.
At this point, I actually told my friend that the answer to the emptiness lay in finding that perfect someone. That once that person arrived, she'd have that person with whom she could share her day with, that person who would pick her up when she's down, that person who she would live for, absolutely and without question. Then she'd find meaning.
Eventually though, this thought didn't sit right with me. Something simply smacked wrong. Then I figured this much out. Why should one's stability, one's sense of meaning be attached to anyone? Shouldn't it lie with no one else but yourself?
See, the problem with being with someone else when you're not comfortable with yourself is that that person will hide your instability. If you're not comfortable with yourself in even some small way, that someone else will stroke your ego, will have undeniably great times with you, and will stop yo u from thinking that you're not okay with yourself because they'll never stop telling you how wonderful you are.
But then the inevitable conclusion I drew from that train of thought was one I wasn't prepared for. Yes, I can imagine how to make sense of things if I'm with someone else. I can easily imagine how to be happy if I had that someone special with me. How could I not be? But what if I take that person out of the picture? What if I had to find a way to be happy and content by myself? Contentment dependent on no one else but me. Problem is, I have no idea how to do that.
Some people never even question the need for someone else. Ever notice how when you're a certain age, people around here just expect you to be married? And when you tell them you're not, they give you this look as if you were crippled or something? It's as if they're saying, "You poor thing, how could you possibly be happy when you're not married with children?" And the thing is, a number of people actually agree with this thinking. That they're not complete unless they have a significant other.
It's far too easy to use someone else to dodge one's own insecurities. It's far too easy to believe that you're okay with yourself when you've got someone that loves you. For most of this year, I truly believed that the measure of me moving on would be when I found a great relationship. But once I had to think about the idea that I first needed to establish a great relationship with myself, suddenly what I thought was the answer to my questions would be nothing more than the ultimate cover-up.
Because in the end, it really shouldn't be up to anyone else to make me happy. It doesn't mean I don't want someone in my life, because I do. I guess it just means that I have to remember that old maxim: "Love is like a butterfly. Chase it as you may, you'll never catch it. But sit quietly by yourself and it just might land on your shoulder." Maybe, for it to come, I should stop looking around and start looking within.
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