Why Would You Do That?!

The ties that bind

People have things they want in life. Things like a place to call their own, things to entertain them and possessions to collect and take care of. People seek out friends to spend their time with and share they joys and woes. Along this line they also tend to seek someone to share more, a relationship where they share themselves and most, if not everything, in their lives.

At what point do the things that you seek out in your life become chains that drag you down?

While people want all these things, they also want a measure of control over their life and surroundings. But your own house can become a place that is mostly bothersome. Perhaps you’d like to spend time in a completely different country, but you’re afraid of letting go of  the place where you can feel safe. 

The possessions that you have and the activities that you tend to do can start to feel like a chore, but you keep doing them because perhaps you feel like you should stick to the thing you started with. You have friends at the club you’re a member of and you wouldn’t want to let them down. Your friends expect things from you because you’ve always been there for them and why should you not be there for them in the future?

The person you’re in a relationship with asks a certain level of commitment. It’d be silly to think this is strange, but somehow it feels as if every decision you make has to be run by another person before you can make it. Everywhere you want to go has to be approved or at least ran by some sort of overseer who is aware of every single thing you do. You’re getting older and you’re expected to settle down for a bit, move in together, share the most important matters, maybe even think of… kids. Perhaps the very greatest commitment.

At what point does your commitment to the ties that you made stop and the part where you decide what to do with the rest of your life begin?

You can sell your house, forsake your friends, break up with your significant other and simply sever all the ties that you made. But freedom doesn’t lie in breaking away from all the things that are or were important to us. Freedom lies in having the ability, room and opportunity to change.

Feelings of being stifled in a relationship, platonic or romantic, tend to have to do with not having any room to grow as a person, but being forced to comply with the wants and needs of others. They expect certain things from you, even though it might not comply with what you want or need.

When that happens, I find it best to take a moment and evaluate what you’re still gaining from a relationship. If every time you meet a friend you end up doing things you’re really not comfortable doing, you might want to either discuss this with your friend or maybe even get to a point where you just don’t want to meet up anymore. This tends to be hard, as you’re letting go a part of yourself.

That’s what growth is though. Not just adding new parts to yourself, like a machine adding new modules for new functions. But a continuous process of evaluating what parts of you still feel like you and add to the overal enjoyment you get out of life, shedding the ones that don’t, keeping the ones that do and exploring new ones that make you not into a brand new you, but an updated you who has more experience and knowledge about your world.

That’s what personal freedom is all about. Learning, growing, adapting, gaining new ways of interacting. Someone who cares for you will give you that space and you’ll both be able to experience the way your relationship works as the persons you are becoming.

And sometimes, it’s just nice to go back and experience all the things that you thought you left behind forever. Just to see what they look like now.