Is anyone else more valuable than you?

Who do you consider to be so much more valuable than you, and for whom you would choose to throw your entire life down the drain?  As disturbing as it may sound, this question unambiguously illustrates a choice that a large majority of individuals make on a regular basis.  Such choice is most likely to come from a non-cognitive thought process, which depicts a reality that so many people systematically construct.  When is it healthy and productive to look up to a role model or a mentor, and when does it become utterly destructive to believe that someone who does not have your best interest at heart is there for you?  It is an absolute necessity to observe all those demeanors that you may have embraced, and that have pushed you to rely on others to (supposedly) create your very own life.       

::: When does needing to rely on others reflect a clear mistrust of yourself?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to follow into someone’s foot step, as long as it remains temporary.  There are a few individuals out there you may view as mentors, role models, father figures, etc.  And the efforts that you produce to replicate their achievements can certainly generate a significant value-added to your existence.  However, when those efforts cease to contribute to the emancipation of your life, it is then your duty to acknowledge it as quickly as possible.  It is indeed highly precarious and dangerous to decide, even momentarily, to surrender parts of what you are, so you can embrace someone else’s beliefs.  The outcome is ineluctable and often times irreversible: you must divorce your entire self and consequently lose yourself.       

The ability to know right away whether an option is worth considering is not a challenge that is insurmountable.  And it does not require years of training or some sorts of superpowers to allow this talent to be an intrinsic part of what you are.  It necessitates nothing more than the simple and straightforward willingness to see without biases.  In other words, you have to see people and occurrences for what they really are and not for what you want them to be.  Unfortunately, in many cases the willingness to truthfully assess what a situation is or how someone really looks like in the moment is oppressed by the burning desire to push an agenda.  And the agenda becomes the source of all biases.  The overwhelming presence of those biases motivates people to realize, when it is already too late, that they should have opened their eyes and followed their instinct, instead of negating it.

The decision to rely on others is quite a tortuous process.  First, you must construct a hidden agenda that implies that other individuals must fill a void that you have created and maintained in your life.  Then you must find them, so you can push and fulfill your agenda successfully.  A hidden agenda is no different from an ulterior motive.  It involves the participation of people who do not know that you are about to use or abuse them.  There is no other way around.  The problem is that you instantly become totally powerless, because you are at the mercy of your preys’ abilities to deliver something for which they have no awareness in the first place.  If you take a truthful look at it, how fast, elegant, comfortable and easy is this operation?  Is there another option?  Well, how about acknowledging the fact that what you require does not have to originate from a fraudulent sentiment?  How about inviting someone to appear in your life and facilitate your accomplishing your goals, not as a substitution to what you are but only as an addition to your efforts?  Frankly, why should anyone have to take successions of detours when shortcuts are available?  Ultimately, it is a matter of recognizing that you can generate what you want, along with the ability to include other people in the process, as long as you do not make it an obligation and you do not divorce yourself.

::: Why can a relationship with another individual feel so lonely?

As soon as you decide that you need someone else to move on or create something, multiple series of biases instantly emerge.  Now, why would you choose to deviate from what you know works so well for you and your life?  By definition, this is what a bias is.  By choosing to do so, who do you end up accommodating?  Do you spend all your energy making sure that this other person delivers what you implicitly demand, including the assurance that you become successful?  Does this dynamic breathe expansion, or does it suffocate desperation?  To assess in full-on honesty whether another party’s involvement has the potential to be an addition to you and your views -and not a substitution- is a potent alternative.  Do you believe that you need someone else, so you can finally feel complete?  If so, you can never be satisfied with your own self, because you systematically need the presence of another person to confirm that you now feel complete.  Most people start a relationship to fill a void.  They equate aloneness to emptiness.  If this is your truth, how much did you have to sacrifice to be in relationships with others and, consequently, eliminate aloneness from your life? 

To be in a relationship with another individual can feel obnoxiously lonely.  It is a terrible misconception to believe that company automatically fills a void.  How many men and women do you know think that they are stuck in their marriages, and yet are not doing anything to extirpate themselves from such an emotionally precarious situation?  Despite the physical presence of the other person, they are very much alone, with no one else to turn to.  But is that truly aloneness, or does it rather depict a great sense of emptiness?  Emptiness as a reality offers no other option but to rely on someone else to fill the void.  And the justification of choice to embark on this path is desperation.  The latter should explain why so many relationships in existence are dreadful, since desperation is a highly predominant sentiment inside this society.  

The decision to invite people and things to create real value-added to life can generate great momentum for the development of a conscious behavior, from which the desire to be aware at all times becomes the main driver.  It includes the obligation to look at the pertinence of welcoming someone else’s involvement.  If such involvement does not complement and create value, it has to be discarded.  A job represents a clear illustration of what I just stated.  To most men and women, having a job is solely used to survive.  It is assuredly not used as a means to seek greater and bigger.  It is only intended to pay the bills and save a couple of dollars here and there.  Most individuals view jobs as a way to keep-on enduring life, and not as a powerful activity that would allow them to thrive and prosper.  Hence, the job quickly substitutes itself to the one who holds it.  And the consequences are horrifying: the individual is stuck inside a tiny box that prevents him from clearly seeing what other alternatives exist.  “Be grateful to have a job in this economy…”  How many times have you heard this abomination?  Well, it is never too late to purge your brain from all those programs to which you have been subjected since birth. Once again, it is a choice, and no one should make it for you.

To blindly obey what society in its ensemble expects from you is viewed as the easiest and most effortless lifestyle to embrace.  Consequently, to silently follow the rules and dogmas that others have established on your behalf is the right choice.  If the latter describes one of your core beliefs, your life cannot be entirely fulfilling.  You may certainly become outrageously successful on a professional level, but the intense dreadfulness that would characterize your personal life would undeniably make you a shallow, empty and non-conscious individual.  But who cares when social and financial statuses are indeed the means that are utilized to measure an individual’s value, right?  Well, you can assuredly have it all, without having to conform to anyone’s rules and corrupt what you intrinsically are.  It is your choice.

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You are the only person who has the power to give your life a direction.  You are the only person who can make anything so clear, because ultimately you know what is best for you.  Life is way too short and way too much of an exciting adventure to give-up on yourself and give others the power to decide for you.  Anything and anyone that you elect to consciously add is a bonus.  And there is nothing that you should consider as being more powerful or greater than you.  If that is not the case, then you have lost all forms of control over your own existence, and you are at the mercy of others’ choices and conducts.