Denial, humility, true love, dreams, and ego

It is beyond frustrating to try and reject someone who doesn’t seem to be getting the message. No matter how much you try to insult them or hurt their feelings to drive them away from you, they find a way to interpret what you say or do as a sign of undying, ultimate, height of love for them. These same people may insist that “if you would just ignore me, I’d believe you’re not interested,” but if you try to ignore them, they push and prod, try to get a reaction out of you similarly to a mosquito. When you react to it, as most people eventually would, they cheer and declare it (to themselves) that you love them after all.

These people also tend to think themselves heroic because they can take tons of abuse and not hear a word said. “What do you mean, mr. Idols Judge, what do you mean I can’t hold a tune?” “I’m saying you were systematically off key and it’s a no for me.” “Oh that’s not nice, I am the best singer in the world!” “Are you shitting me..?”

You gotta have a thick skin, right? No. A thick skin is no good if it’s based on denial and self-deception rather than humility.

What is denial?

Denial, of course, happens when there is a realization that would cause an emotion too big, too hurtful, or too scary trying to make an entrance. Denial protects one’s idea of self, and sometimes it protects a person’s dreams, both realistic and unrealistic. Denial is stuff that you don’t want to face, of course. You know it’s there, and that you are only delaying the inevitable, but you still do it, looking for a solution to your problem.

Denial, more than anything, buys you time. It’s the snooze button in your alarm clock, the door you close on a messy room pretending it’s not that bad yet, and a stretchy waistband in your jeans. The wedding ring you refuse to take off even though you’ve been divorced for 4 years. Everything that helps you to bury your head in the sand and pretend everything is fine.

You KNOW, you’re just not looking at it

Deep down, you know what the truth is. You just don’t want to look at it, sometimes KNOWING that the answer is really bad, sometimes fearing that it is. Often we avoid looking at realities simply fearing that what we will find will be very unpleasant, even when it wouldn’t be. You can be in denial about something very solvable, and even positive things. You may be in denial about feeling happy about something because you fear you might not truly be as happy as you think you are if you took a closer look at it.

When words don’t mean a thing

People in love can tell each other almost anything and they always know what their loved one TRULY means. (Even though they don’t always dare to hope they know, in the beginning of it all.) However, it’s different when you SYSTEMATICALLY alter the meaning to mean whatever it is that you want to hear.

It tends to be, that whenever someone is utterly in love with another person, they, at first, reverse every word they say to the negative. Even though they know-know, they fear they’re fooling themselves, and their fears translate every possible ambiguous statement to the most negative possible interpretations. “I love your hair.” “What? You mean to say my eyes are ugly?!”

In contrast, a person who is in denial about a relationship being at an end or them having been rejected, unloved by someone, they tend to do the opposite. No matter how mean a person is to them, they somehow manage to make it sound like “but deep down I love you, of course. I’m just messing with you. You should know better.” It may feel quite impossible to convince a person who has certain beliefs about “no matter what” and “love ever after” that well… Things have arrived to an end.

The person in denial may insist that there’s nothing wrong in demanding love from another person, or that love always conquers all, despite the other person’s feelings and feelings of entrapment.

An antidote to denial is humility

Humility is not the feeling of submission or feeling small or insignificant, although sometimes feeling humbled can LEAD to those feelings. Humility is the feeling of facing up to realities, admitting THE REAL situation. Facing the truth. Admitting to the truth. Nothing more than that. To be humble, you don’t have to pretend to be less than what you are, in fact, that is going to denial about your greatness and talent, which is also a common thing to feel denial over. “I don’t want to admit to being more talented than my friends, because my friends wouldn’t like me or I wouldn’t really like my friends anymore…”

Reality. Humility is about facing the reality NOW, what TRULY IS in this moment of time, and what it isn’t. To see the positives as well as the negatives. Nothing is always either one or the other, there is always a mix of positives and negatives to figure out when you face up to a reality. (Until you are so happy that you go into denial about it because you fear you’re fooling yourself.) But more often than not, it’s a mixture of both positives and negatives that you have to acknowledge.

Humility is accepting reality RIGHT NOW, in this moment

It may be easier to accept realities when you realize it is only NOW. In this moment of time. What is the CURRENT situation you are facing, without making an automatic connection between now and 1 year from now? What is now doesn’t have to be the way it is in a year’s time, but not facing realities will almost certainly either make matters worse or not change things for one jolt.

Reality is how much money you’ve got on your bank account. How many friends do you actually have that you can count on. Reality is about what do you know about the stuff you want to achieve, and how much do you NOT KNOW. Reality is about how many resources you have and what you’re lacking, and about what problems you need to solve if you intend to get to your goal before you kick the rust bucket.

You need a real plan of action. You need to know who and what will stand in your way and how are you going to overcome those obstacles. Humility is about accepting that some people don’t freaking like you and that there are people who hang onto your every word when you wish they didn’t take everything quite that literally.

Sometimes people are trying to force you to face realities, when in fact, THEY are in denial

A good example of this would be that you, for instance, have a dream of some description. Someone who is in love with you but you’re not in love with them finds that your dream or goal, or a rival love interest or both is harming their chance of having you. They may feel that everything was fine until that new “shiney object” came along and you were completely swept of your feet by it, and now that’s all you’re thinking about.

What they may haven’t realized that you were never that interested or in love with them, to begin with, and that you were more or less killing time with them. This may not always be the case, in many cases, a person can be completely happy with the way things are PROVIDED they don’t see an alternative to the way things are. They may have never, for instance, been completely in love with anyone, so they think “this is all there is to wish for” until someone completely amazing walks into the picture.

It may be a religious awakening, a new love, a renewed hope for “making it”, a new business idea, anything that this person sees is distracting you from what is real or important. In the meanwhile, they are refusing to accept your priorities have changed and they are no longer at the top of your list of priorities (if they ever truly were).

Are you trying to play someone or something out of your way this way, by chance? Waiting for them to snap to their senses, maybe? Trying to play time by sabotaging someone’s dreams through The Law of The Truest Wish, even?

That’s not love, sweetheart.

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