I am indebted to Paige Rose PhD who inspired this conversation.
In this conversation I'll make a powerful claim, one I'd
originally
prefaced by saying something with dramatic literary effect like "Ever
since the dawn of time, ever since
God
was
a baby girl,
throughout
history
including early unrecorded
history,
for as long as
human beings
have been living on
the planet,
..." etc.
But with due consideration and looking with newly imposed
rigor
(seriously), as dramatic and as powerful as that may sound, we can't
claim anything that way. And why we can't claim anything that way, is
obvious: prior to recorded
history,
there was no record of anything. So if something happened prior to
recorded
history,
there'd be no proof of it even if it happened, and we'd have no
basis on which to claim it happened. We can however make
the claim that something happened if it happened in
recordedhistory,
and certainly within the last two thousand years or so. If it happened
then, we can indeed claim it.
So with that proviso now in place, I'll make a powerful claim:
throughout recorded
history,
there's never been an example (not one, not a single one) of any
individual person being liked by every single other person. There's
no precedent for any individual person being liked by
every single other person. Not one. Not a single one. Not ever. That
tends to suggest that the odds of you being liked by everyone are slim
to none. So someone doesn't like you? Get over it.
Be careful. What's important to get here is that my "Get over it" is
neither derogatory nor disparaging nor callous. Rather it's
compassionate. It's insightful. Here's how so: the
trouble
with not being liked, is rarely in not being liked by another.
Yes, that's how it
shows up
for us: that the
trouble
with not being liked, is in not being liked by another. That's the
coin of the realm
in which all those unrequited love novellas,
TV "soaps",
and screenplays gaddingly traffic.
But in reality it's almost always never that. In reality the
trouble
is almost always in not liking ourselves. The
trouble
is almost never in another not liking us. The
trouble
is almost always in us not liking ourselves. It's almost never that
another won't engage with us. It's almost always that we are disengaged
from ourselves ie that we're disconnected from
who we are really.
The real issue (if you'll just take a cold, flat-footed,
unflinching
look) is we have not resolved liking ourselves ie we haven't resolved
liking
who we are really
simply because we don't knowwho we are really.
And in the absence of liking ourselves, it's easier (that is to say
it's more
convenient)
to look at not being liked by another as the causal issue in that
maddening malaise: the sense of not being liked.
That's problematic - twice. First, the odds are really low of resolving
the sense of not being liked by
projecting
that expectation onto another. Listen: "You complete me"
is actually a rocky foundation for a relationship (my apologies to
Jerry Maguire). Second, not liking
who we are really,
is the more immediate issue, an essential issue for all
humans
in the matter of
being human,
one we'll be stuck with until we resolve it posthaste with velocity and
intentionality.
That said, the injunction to "get over it" in the matter of not being
liked by everyone (given that throughout recorded
history,
there's no precedent for any one individual person being liked by every
single other person) is deeply compassionate of
who we are really
(and almost piously so). It doesn't diminish it.