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This society as we know it now appears to be a dead end based on a neoliberal, scientific materialist narrative.
Last week my wife and I celebrated 23 years of marriage, which is quite a long time compared to the couples around us. Most marriages that divorced in 2022 lasted 5 to 10 years. This led me to the question of what the recipe is for a healthy, long-lasting relationship. When I look at my connection with my partner, we met later in life, and I mean early and mid 30s. We had both been in relationships before that had ended. And we had both been working on ourselves for a long time, which had created a form of self-awareness. Our autonomous center and anchoring point within us from the experience of self-love.
This self-awareness and self-love assured me that I did not need the other person and in this case their love to fill my inner emptiness, which is an inevitable but often unconscious fact of the lack or deficiency of our youth. Exceptions. From this self-awareness, I was touched when I met her, I was touched by his individuality, by the person he was and still is. The mutual infatuation and subsequent growing love found its basis in our individuality. So not from filling the void of the other and from the symbiosis that can then arise. I knew this from a previous relationship, where I tried to keep the other person in balance based on my savior model. An old familiar pattern from my youth.
Kahlil Gibran’s famous text on marriage comes to mind; love one another, but do not make love a bond. Let us rather let them be a rough sea between the shores of your souls. Fill one another’s cups, but do not drink from the same cup. Don’t share your bread, but don’t eat from the same piece. Sing and dance together and be happy, but be each alone, as the strings of a lute stand alone, though the same music vibrates through them.
It is important to focus a little more on the term self-awareness, what it is and what it is not. I call self-awareness that part of every person that is connected to the essence, to the spiritual part of life. I start from philosophical idealism according to which reality consists of a spiritual and a material part, the formal world. This is in contrast to materialism, which assumes that total reality is material, which is also the starting point of our regular science.
My idealistic starting point can provoke strong reactions from people who adhere to materialism, because they think that I use straw men in my reasoning. Their criticism always boils down to the same thing, namely that idealism cannot be demonstrated with materialistic tools based on the external senses, and therefore it is nonsense. The self-awareness I’m talking about is like a seed potentially present in every person and can grow or not depending on the environment. Just like plants, self-awareness also needs nourishment, which can be from books, from contact with people who also have this self-awareness, such as teachers or other adults, but also from one’s own internal experiences.
We can create the fertile environment ourselves to allow this plant of self-awareness to grow into a robust tree. This is a process of trial and error and facing our patterns that hide the pain of our youth. For me, this self-awareness goes beyond what we commonly call self-consciousness, which is related to our way of thinking and the image we have of ourselves based on our personality. This is often a rock-solid image that we defend tooth and nail from the outside world. There is little room for growth and change here, contrary to what I mean by self-awareness, which is connected to our essence.
For me, this self-awareness is the recipe for a lasting relationship, where we support each other’s individual growth. And with this individual growth, mutual love and compassion also grow. If we push each other, we are able to quickly see from this self-awareness that the other person may be the trigger, but not the cause, of intense emotions that often originate in our youth and lack of love and support. . When. This trigger brings this issue to the surface, and by taking responsibility for it based on this self-awareness, this pain from the past can be healed from within. Not through the love of the other. The other is a loving witness. Know that a healthy relationship is not perfect and is not without triggers because the other person is so loving. My experience is that my compassion for my wife has grown and is mutual, but this love does not fill the mutual void. In this way, this love based on the presence of self-awareness constitutes fertile ground for the development of our children, but also for the work we carry out as self-employed workers in the healthcare sector from our collective studio Mens&Groei.
It makes me understand how important this self-awareness is, in relationships, but I think also in our society. In my opinion, this self-awareness is the key to creating a healthy and sustainable society, respecting people and nature. This society as we know it now appears to be a dead end based on a neoliberal, scientific materialist narrative. We still look for solutions outside of ourselves and spend huge amounts of money on this, for example in the technology we have developed, artificial intelligence. Instead of focusing inward, where that self-awareness is present. From this self-awareness one develops one’s individuality which is not isolated, but rather connected to others, to their environment. From your own common sense, from your own moral point of view. Autonomous, not imposed from the outside. For me, this self-awareness is the condition for achieving a healthy balance and neoliberal economics with our sacred faith in the free market no longer becomes an end, but a means. And this also applies to technology.
I am writing this article because I am genuinely concerned about these times and the chaos and confusion we find ourselves in and I want to contribute to it based on my experience as a human being and a social worker. In this article I form my line of thought, indicating that self-awareness, since it has its roots in our essence, in our spiritual part, could be the key in the transition to a healthy and sustainable society, as well as in relationships. the case is. I’m not saying everyone needs to achieve this form of self-awareness, but I think we at least need leaders with self-awareness. So that they can help us and support us in the ongoing transition.
The nice thing is that I meet more and more people, especially young people, who have a form of self-awareness, which allows them to use their own common sense and moral position. Don’t simply settle for the current narrative, which in my opinion is on the verge of collapse. They are looking for their own way, moving away from the old system and for me they are a sign of a hopeful future with a healthy and sustainable society.
2024-01-21 13:07:17
#relationship #society #healthy #sustainable #Joop