Let’s say love, friendships, and other human connections are but leaps of faith we take. We place bets on people and shed our walls to them, at the risk that they may be carrying roses, lilies or knives.
Remember this scene from Modern Love? Episode 2, When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist.
When Emma confesses to Joshua that she cheated on her, she says,
I slept with him…
Joshua slams his laptop shut, gets up and walks off.
…for ten seconds, then I stopped it, and I came straight back to you. I don’t know; maybe this was just one crazy moment before us. Because I love you, Joshua.
He comes back in and presses his words upon her, That’s not love. That’s guilt. Love is trust. That’s the only currency, and you broke it.
No, it isn’t, she’s crying now, but Joshua is not listening. Love is lots of things, Joshua.
Joshua walks out of Emma’s apartment, leaving her behind weeping.
Now, I do not want to discuss cheating here. I want to talk about what happens when we get hurt. When we are hurt, abandoned or wronged, in friendship or love, two instincts rise to our rescue—ego and consciousness.
Ego
Ego is the ‘alpha’, the protective instinct, that rogue friend who wants quick fixes and immediate release from pain. Its master strategy is to shut everything out. To Joshua, it must have said things like,
look, they cheated on you.
Your love didn’t matter much, did it?
They broke your trust; how could they love you?
If you stayed here one more moment, what kind of a man would you be?
Have some self-respect.
You’re a better man than this.
And we may be tempted to pass it off as superficial or self-destructive, but ego is our friend, and we need it. At that point, it is Joshua’s wall, holding off demons that are gushing in at his vulnerability. To Joshua, his demons must have been screaming things like:
she did that because that’s what you deserve,
because your love didn’t suffice,
because you can’t love a woman properly,
or…
And they must have been nudging his ego left, right and centre. Ego fights those demons head-on, and it’s very quick to act.
Consciousness
Then, there is consciousness. It’s the rooted, more centred instinct, undeterred by demons. It always tells you the truth.
No matter how powerful and pressing toxic thoughts get, in the gut, we always know the objective reality, don’t we? Consciousness holds you from within and does not shame you for hurting. It’s the nurturing instinct, whose only intent is to heal from within, and takes its own sweet time to do so.
We never hurt over a person, do we? We hurt over losses, and losses are personal. Joshua was not hurting because Emma slept with her ex-lover. He was hurting because he loved her, and his trust was broken. Now that he knew that about her, his deep-seated male ego would not let him feel secure with her. So he cannot be with the woman he so dearly loves, and there is a void he knows not how to fill.
And since all the love he has for her cannot evaporate in that one passing moment,
It shakes his sense of self.
What does it make him—weak? Too emotional?
Ego fears it does and asks him to man up and shut it out. Consciousness, though, sees it for what it is—an untrue judgement manoeuvred by his demons, fuelled by the hurt.
Ego and consciousness are similar to how the body responds to a physical wound. When a cut in your skin happens, the immediate response is to clot blood and form a patch to stop the infection from entering. Then it heals the wound from within. Ego and consciousness operate similarly. And notice how you need both, for if the blood does not clot, infections will enter your body. And if the wound does not heal from within, you can wear that patch of clot for as long as you want. All it needs is a scratch, and you will start bleeding again.
Most people are wearing these clots, dearly fabricated by the ego, to contain their emotional pain so it does not get exposed. And it keeps getting scratched, doesn’t it?
It brings me to my most important point, which is:
We can empower ourselves to have a choice.
Let’s say you have a 12-year-old friendship that’s dying. The slow death of it is as painful as it could be.
Ego’s advice is very obvious:
- They have been ignoring you for so, so long. Stop lying to yourself that they still care about you. They don’t.
- They won’t share a thing about themselves with you now. So stop oversharing—it undervalues you.
- Do they ever call you by themselves? And what happens when you do? An awkward 15-minute conversation wherein they promise to call on the weekends? And they forget?
- And what about when they’re visibly frazzled, and you ask them about it? Nothing, all good, they say?
- And how long have you been trying? A year and a few more months? How long is too long?
- Didn’t you see their stories when their other friends achieved things, cracked internships, or on their birthdays? But not a text for you.
Ego’s only motive is to protect you, come what may. It will tend to accuse them, blame and criticize them with angst. It will resent them for hurting you. How could they?
Consciousness, however, will want to mend your relationship. It will flush some sonder into your system, will beseech you to understand they are just as human, with an equally complicated life and their capability to handle everything at once just as impaired as yours. Or maybe more impaired, but you love them despite that, right?
It will say to you:
- Your hurt at their extended unavailability is legitimate, but understand that your importance for them might not be depreciating.
- You know how busy and tiring their med-student life got, and you have been an understanding friend by far.
- Understand that they might not know what caused you pain. Tell them.
- Or maybe they’re caught up in something very tiring, terrible, or personal. Ask them.
It sounds like pretty sane advice, doesn’t it? It comes from within, too, except it is not so easy to hear it, let alone listen to it. When wounds are freshly inflicted, ego, with all its beliefs, rushes to the occasion. Thoughts of rage, betrayal and pain dominate, and surges of resentment swell high. The first instincts are to retaliate, blame, criticize, or worse, hurt back.
Hurt people, hurt people, they say.
But it will only push them away without healing you. There might be temporary joy in vengeance, but no lasting satisfaction comes from it.
It is only when you cut through that noise and sit through the commotion until the waves subside that you start hearing your consciousness. It is only when your feelings untangle that you start having that choice—to act from your ego or consciousness.
Although, that begs the question:
Is consciousness our ultimate saviour?
No.
Consciousness is the nurturing instinct. It wants to mend things.
And sometimes, it will come at your cost. It will plead you to understand their circumstances and trust their intentions even when their actions do not back what they say. It will counsel you to be the nurturing force.
If you explore the extreme of it, you might empty yourself. The ego is important, too, because it protects your interest.
The right thing to do?
I don’t know. Who knows, really? But here is something I do, and you should try if you may.
Tell them. Everything. In elaborate words, without accusations. Trust them to fix things.
Be more vulnerable when hurt?
Yes.
Because when you do that, you establish two things:
- That they may genuinely be having their circumstances and reasons that you don’t know of. Or they may be unaware of your suffering.
- Or maybe you’re right. You have lost importance for them.
So let them know everything. Then take a step back, and observe.
If the former is true, they will tell you. They will show concern, wherein you can press that they need to work on your friendship in actions, not words. When they show effort and intent, you will have your closure.
If the latter is true, well, you will know as well. Our lives have individual courses, and there are infinite factors that keep something relevant or drive it stale. It speaks nothing of you. As for your bond, you did not believe it to be broken until you were given explicit proof.
The only way past any pain is through it; mourning is a healthy thing. And if you are suffering because of someone, maybe you should let them know.
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