Life is simpler than we like to admit.
What you believe shows up in how you live.
Something is always trying to pull you away from what’s good for you. Staying steady in yourself mostly comes down to saying no to that pull, and staying close to the choices and people that keep you true to what you value.
If life is so straightforward, why are we all so stuck?
I think it’s because the media, the wellness machine, and the friends who repeat clickbait thinking back to us are all very good at making non-human things sound like the solution to our discomfort and our fears.
Constantly evaluating your partner’s interior and cataloguing every flaw in your life in order to “grow” now counts as healthy. Coaches who coach coaches and insta-therapists flood our feeds with fantasies and new ways to evaluate everyone around us, at the rate of thousands of videos per second.
Total independence at the cost of connection is highly prized.
This week I saw a mom’s group thread where women traded ways to get their partner and kids out of the house at the same time, so they could be alone more often. They described extreme anxiety in the group setting of a family. Instead of asking why that might be, everyone, offered tips for sending the husband out solo with the kids more often. Isn’t that odd that all the women would have the same experience of feeling alienated?
What if the problem is more about how we coach each other into thinking about our lives, instead of our lives themselves?
Another post, from a popular men’s therapist, claimed men are suffering relationally and the solution is more male friends and more therapy. The post was built on a study where 60% of men said their wife was their best friend.
Sixty percent. Those men answering already have the thing. And the expert read it as a problem. But what if it isn’t a problem?
When I think back to men my grandpa’s age, outside of work or hobby buddies, they shared their inner world with one person: their wives.
