Chapter 1: solution
"Is this you?
The solution is to be invisible. To offer no opinion until others have done
so, and then only to agree. To go along with any request. To impose no
boundaries or barriers. To prevent yourself from ever saying "no." To give up
on directing your own life. To pacify those who might disapprove of you. To
hide your ideas, your dreams, your wishes, and your emotions. To dress, act,
and live in order to blend into the background and disappear. To exist not so
much as a person, but as a mirror for other people: reflecting back their ideas,
their wishes, their expectations, their hopes, and their goals. To reflect and
thereby vanish. Anything to keep yourself from really being there.
Unfortunately, this solution does not really work. Humans are not meant
to be invisible, nor to live as reflections of the lives of others. Extinguishing the
self is not an option. It leads to greater fear, more helplessness, sharper resentment, and deeper depression.
Other people see life as little more than a competition. If they are not to
become invisible themselves, then others will have to be invisible. There is no
choice. Their views must be accepted. Their wishes must be honored. Their way
must be everyone's way. And should anyone not give in, the anger will flow.
The issue will be forced, and the wishes, hopes, and desires of others will be
ignored or trampled. To be there, other people (with their inconvenient attitudes
and opinions) will have to be absent.
Is this you?
The competitive approach doesn't work either. The anger is never really
satisfied. When others give in, it is never joyfully. And they begin drifting away
to the exits, leaving the angry person alone to resent the desertion. The effort to
control others makes life uncontrollable.
The real solution? To be there. Not to be perfect. To expose our flaws, our
irrational emotions and opinions, our strange preferences, our incomprehensible dreams, our unaccountable tastes, and our all-too-human selves to others.
To be there. Not so that others will bow down to us or hide themselves from us,
but in a way that invites others to be there as well. A way that acknowledges
the right of everyone to be every bit as irrational, flawed, and human as we are. "
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