When you’re stuck on a ship, spending most of your days floating seemingly aimlessly on miles of sea, you start to notice some tendencies about yourself.
In my case, I’ve noticed that I’ve been keeping to myself more than usual.
I’ve always tended to be a bit of a lone wolf, but these past couple of weeks I’ve taken it to an extreme – avoiding the bar, not meeting many new people.
Part of this is I’m sure due to the fact that I’m only on here for three weeks – one more week after this cruise. But I think mostly, it’s having to do with a bigger shift in me.
For a long time, being social and connecting with people was very important to me. Well, I guess it still is. Only before, I would prioritize going out to new environments just to meet new people and practice my social skills. In my mind, it made sense that the more I did this, the more rich of a social life I would have.
There was just one problem. I had very few real, lasting relationships. In fact, I had very few relationships at all. Most of my encounters were just that – encounters. They rarely led to anything deeper or more meaningful. And at the end of the day (or night), I would wonder why I still felt the big empty hole inside.
Perhaps I really did want to be more social, to connect more. And I would be mistaken if I said I did not learn anything from those social odysseys. But now that I have some distance from them, I see that they missed the mark. They didn’t provide me with the social security I thought they would. In fact, they only imparted feelings of frustration that the more I invested time and energy into what I thought would bring the connection I craved, the more it eluded me.
After doing this for so many years, something’s gotta give. And it is, I think. One thing is for certain: I am changing. It’s not that I no longer want a good social life and connection with other human beings – it’s that I’m no longer pursuing that by the same means. Now, I am retreating more into myself. And this feels weird. It goes against everything I thought I knew about what it takes to be more social, to be more integrated. Sometimes I even feel that I am taking it too far. But sometimes you have to swing the pendulum all the way to other side to get closer to balance.
Changing the means to achieve connection definitely has something to do with the fact that I know intuitively that I am wanting a different quality of relationships. It’s not that I will never get back into the social arena, but this temporary “drawing-in” must be some kind of response to a change in what I want.
I didn’t even realize it at the time, but the methods by which I was being “social” were being unconsciously employed because of something I unconsciously—or subconsciously wanted.
So what did I subconsciously want? It seems that I wanted connection, yes—but perhaps, not for the sake of connection itself.
Whatever the case, my continued attempts at connection did not bring the fulfillment I was seeking. Instead, they only brought more confusion, emptiness, and fruitless chasing.
My first inclination when I noticed I was being more of a loner was to be hard on myself, to think that I shouldn’t be isolating, shouldn’t be withdrawing, shouldn’t spend so much time alone. But now, I see that this is actually a natural emergence, a way in which I am growing as a person. What I wanted, or thought I wanted, is changing, and is being replaced by something new, and hopefully, better. And so is the means to get there.
It’s hard for me to see now, but I’ve got to believe that this counter-intuitive reclusiveness is really leading to better, more meaningful, higher-quality relationships. This can require a real leap of faith, as the means by which I am getting there seems so opposite from what I had been doing until now.
I guess the thing that’s really changing is my understanding. I could have kept going the way I was, hoping to get different results, or even settling for the same results and rationalizing them in my mind. And I can’t even say that the methods by which I was showing up as a social person were wrong. But what was yielding the repeating frustrating, unfulfilling results, it seems, was the place that my actions were coming from.
In next week’s insight, I’ll go into this in more detail: how the place from which we take action can make all the difference between living in frustration and emptiness, and having results that are fulfilling, meaningful and sustainable.