Square peg, round hole; square peg, round hole.
This phrase was bouncing in my head a few weeks ago because I figured maybe wishful thinking had disguised itself as hope again. Hope is a tricky bugger. See, I've been learning this thing about my gut and how I should listen to it, it's where I felt hope. I can't really explain it better than that, or in a way that's more relatable to a non-intuitive person. My gut is my compass. Where I get in trouble is when logic gets involved...
It bothers me at a deep level when someone assumes because I'm whatever personality type, I don't know how to engage logic. To the contrary in fact, logic has been known to save the day! It helps diffuse my emotions about a situation, or healthily defer them altogether. But I struggle in that there are places where logic just doesn't cut it. There are times when, not emotions, but choice takes the wheel. Some things just don't make any sense, but we do them. We could blame them on faulty emotional moments, or we could recognize that they're human moments. They're not logical, but they're not fully to be blamed on intuition either. Like love.
As I struggle through being hurt by someone, the logical side of me strives to make sense out of why that hurt is so easily overlooked. It's something I've never been able to make sense out of, because as an adult I see that my response is to do something hurtful in return; act out of spite. I had never fully realized my capability for spite until the last few weeks. I'd never been able to name it: when I get hurt, I want to hurt in return. That's something I've known for a long time, but I had never put the name to it and found a reason to disarm myself. Once I was able to name it as spitefulness, it's been much easier to spot it coming into play and let go of it. It's been easier to make a choice of my actions.
Just tonight I realized something that's incredibly important to my worldview: I have a strong, near-insatiable desire to understand where someone's coming from. When I'm hurt by someone I love who claims to love me, the questions begin to flow. They're echoing and deafening: why? Now, admittedly there's some part of me, especially aspiring to practice therapy someday, that will have to learn to let go of even the "why" to someone's actions or speech. At the same time, the altruistic search for possibilities as to why someone would, say, run a red light, helps steer my heart toward compassion as opposed to anger. Maybe they're going to the hospital. Maybe they're late to a job interview after months of unemployment. Logic saves the day when it's able to show me the way to compassion.
I pondered tonight for a second, among days of intermittent seconds of pondering, why love wouldn't work. You could throw all the love and good patience you have at someone, and it might not work. Every single factor could be in the right position, and still, it may fail. I struggle to make sense of it... However, if for a second of those seconds of wondering I can find compassion within me, it proves me right. If I can find my way to making sense out of the rejection of love laid down, I can prove it's merit still stands. See, compassion would have me understand that some wounds need to be healed and some perceptions addressed before love will be welcomed back in. Some adaptations of love in the past may have been damaging, skewing the perceptions and values of it for the future.
However, the lens does not change the reality that is seen through it — save for by perspective.
This is a place my intuition and my logic can coexist. It's a place of compassion for the past that others have known (same as I have) and how it shapes and even warps their perceptions of the very reality before them. Sometimes, sadly, the reality they see cannot be altered or corrected, or highlighted. Quite simply sometimes those differences can only be held; acknowledged in the heart, with honor for the pain of another. And still can love be dared to be chosen, because it is not altered or weakened by the lens, but a strong and beautiful statement. It is still a willful choice of acceptance and admiration. Another place intuition and logic coexist.
