Remember one of my ponderings about love? “The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.” At the time I was thinking about how difficult I can be to love, how I only have my type of love to give, as imperfect as it is. Today I am meditating on the broader human aspects of that quote.
People can only give what is in them to offer. It is my folly to anticipate someone to behave differently when they’ve done nothing but demonstrate that they do not behave as I expect. What exactly about this wounds me? Is it my naivety that I expect people to behave according to certain codes and manners? Is it that I expect the best from people and am disappointed when they fall short?
One person in my life tells me that I need to lower my expectations of people, to expect to be disappointed. But I don’t want to see the world that way. I want to see a world where people behave to a higher level of social normative standard. I don’t want my life’s mantra to be, like a former friend’s, “People will disappoint you.”
On the other hand, I’m tired of the hurt. I am so let down when someone I felt faith in behaves in a way that doesn’t live up to fundamental standards of courtesy or thoughtfulness. But where is the hurt coming from? Hurt at myself for believing in them? Hurt for myself by being quashed by them--again? Both?
I grieve for the naïve part of me that wants life to be a well-cultured lawn party where we can all speak freely and civilly in the wide openness of sunshine. As much pain as that little-girl-dream brings me when civility and sunshine fail, I don’t want to see that hope go, either. Part of my self-perception of beauty is that I have the capability to expect the best of people. If I take someone else’s bleakly dogmatic view of human life and let hopefulness die, I’ll be losing a huge part of myself.
However, I do think I need to be a little more realistic. I can’t seem to learn the lesson that once someone has proven how wicked and cruel they can be, I should not let time heal the wound and keep returning for more emotional abuse. I get it, I was taken in by something I thought I saw, but the reality was that people can only give what they have to give, nothing more.
The beautiful part of naïve me can expect the best when entering a situation. Learning to find beauty in maturity also, I need to make more rational decisions based on evidence when cotton candy land goes stale.
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