The theory of positivity and being the change that you want to see

When I arrived home at around 6 pm, I was feeling really down and sad from what’s been happening around me. It’s now 11:25 as I am writing this piece and I’m back to being positive again with my outlook in life. What a difference 5 hours makes.

All it took to change my perspective a total 180 degrees was just a pep talk with Nikki. She gave me tons of advice with how to look at life and love. This is going to be long.

Why am I feeling so negative and down anyway? No, I’m not really failing a subject yet (maybe I will on Thursday) or getting dumped by a girl (well almost, you can already call it parallel to a dumping) but I was just really feeling down earlier for no reason at all. I feel that I’ve lost my sense of myself and I’m having a hard time finding it. I feel like lost and used in the vicious cycle of living life in the fast lane. I’ve been expecting too much, especially with love when in fact I don’t really have a right to expect — which is ironic because I’ve always believed in the adage that love comes to you and you do not find it because you will just end up frustrated and disappointed.

Then it all unraveled. Told her that I feel like I’m 35 even though I’m 20 because of rushing things. I really have a tendency to do that. I want to do things with a snap to an extent that I overly hasten up some things that should be taken in slowly because they are delicate processes that one person needs to undergo. She went on lecturing on me like this and like that but the common thing that she told me is SLOW THINGS DOWN and enjoy every moment of your life. She was telling it to my face — a face that badly needed a bitch slap because it already lost cognizance of itself. She provided me a quick bitch slap that leveled me and my expectations with the ground.

You need to know yourself before engaging yourself in a [romantic] relationship, she tells as she continues to narrate and impart her lessons to this student that was on the other end of a computer portal. She hits me with another combo when she told me that I don’t even know who I really am and it’s only apt that I fully know myself inside-out, including what I can do and what I can’t, before I engage with a relationship with another person. She continues by saying that I wouldn’t survive a relationship if I didn’t know myself. Ouch. What a perfect hit. 20 years and I still haven’t fully known myself. I still keep saying or doing the things that I really cannot do. It’s not really like I don’t know what I can do — it’s the part that I don’t fully have a grasp of what I cannot do. This lack of grasp of what I cannot do turns into a bunch of lies engorged in saliva that I deliver to even my friends and the people I consider dear to me. I know, that’s not an excuse for lying.

More slaps to the face, more, more more. She poured it on like hot milk. She tells that I need to be secure with myself before I start looking out for the others, as part of the process of knowing myself. I might just end up hurting girls or worse, get hurt. She goes on narrating that relationships of the lack thereof won’t determine who are you as a person. The quality of the relationship is more important than the relationship itself and I so agree with her. Hastening it up will decrease the quality of the experience and thus it will be deemed as unworthy of an experience. She opened me to the window of thought that I should learn to enjoy myself first before I come and look for enjoyment in others. She’s exactly right, really. I can’t enjoy the company of other without fully realizing how enjoying it is to be myself and with myself. I myself will be the only one to determine when I’m really feeling good with myself or when I’m already ready to take that next step into a new relationship.

As Nikki says, “you need to realize that you’re great on your own”. Part of that realization process is knowing myself. I can’t know how things will be great for me if I don’t know who I really am. Sometimes I am tired of lying to myself. Why am I doing this? I’m not really impressing anyone. Most of the times that I try, the real me re-appears. Sometimes they like it, sometimes they don’t. She tells me to explore more opportunities that are out there. That means valuing friends and family. While lovers may come and go, the friends and the family are a strong set. I realized this as part of her litany (LOL), especially the family. I have a long ways to go with this as I don’t really find myself great on my own. Really long ways. I still feel greatly uncomfortable of myself. But hopefully I will reach that wherein I’m fully secure of myself and what are my limits. There are a lot of advantages to being great on your own, she continues. She tells that she doesn’t feel restricted at all and she doesn’t feel oh-too-sensitive and guilty when she feels like she’s compromising something. She has the freedom to move and she’s very happy with it. And here I am, with that freedom waiting to be explored and capitalized, me insisting to be locked in a prospect relationship which I have no idea of how long and how fruitful will it become or if will it even become formal.

She stressed the importance of two words: ME and TODAY all along. Another bulls-eye for Nikki. She’s collecting bulls-eye after bulls-eye like a sharpshooter. I’ve always been problematic with the future and the things that I can’t control. This is something that I often do with love. I expect too much (and I set the bar pretty high) even though the other party is expecting nothing or really has no plans of meeting my expectations. I like meddling with things that I have no direct control with when all along there is this myself that destiny I could control and try to mold. Sometimes I really can’t help expecting much with love. Case in point, this last girl who is my friend. She’s been mentioned in my last two write-ups. Well I told her my feelings and I expected too much from her. I expected her to like me too in a snap. I expected her to like me back in a snap. I did not consider the fact that he was madly in love with another guy. I thought that her pandemonium over him would be over in a snap. But no. I am wrong. I’ve been burned. This is what I get for expecting too much. I keep on telling her that I’m not forcing the issue to her but the thing is, I’m lying. I’m forcing things, I just don’t admit it. She doesn’t like me and she probably wouldn’t in her lifetime. How many times have I been rejected by her yet I keep coming back. And how many times have I wrote it in this site alone? Probably this will be the last time — just to put closure to this hullabaloo and illusion that I created for myself.

And then she shows me this site which generally shows about being great with yourself. I am completely struck with the comparisons. How good could the story from the site get. I’ll probably look at it everytime I feel insecure about feeling great with myself. That really encapsulates everything that you need to do before I even bother to look outside the box and look for more relationships. That also means that I can do it if the hapless slice of pie can do what it did in the story. I just have to be sincere with myself and everything will turn out fine. Another mistake that she exposed is my notion that it’s generally happier being in a relationship than being single. It really depends on the person. She continues pressing the keyboard and sharing much-needed nuggets to me. I continue to be the student that I am and I continue to listen to her, the master. Relationships just come when you are formally ready — when you’ve passed the requirements and the acid tests. When you already have enough maturity — which I certainly, certainly don’t have right now.

She continues with the chit-chat. It gets interesting. She says that I should get a dog if I really wanted to test myself in a relationship. Dogs are considered man’s best friend so probably she thinks that it’s the closest thing that I will get as a substitute for a human being. Turns out that she has a point for trying to ask me to get a dog. Wisdom at its finest. For me, this was the most defining statement that she made in the entire chat conversation.

Tignan mo kung kaya mong alagaan. Kung inaakala mong mapupunuan ng ibang tao yung kulang na nararamdaman mo, nagkakamali ka. Ikaw lang ang makakagawa non.

Well, she again reiterates for a second time that I should need to slow down, adding that she’s frustrated and pissed off with people who are overly zealous of hastening up things. Well maybe she’d hate me too if she really knew how I wanted things fast. Then she pulls out something from her Multiply site about not missing the best parts of the ride. She also preaches the same — slow down and don’t miss the best parts of the ride. She doesn’t really mean that I should slow down to a point that I’m that close to grinding to a halt. It’s like taking the scenic route and enjoying it enough. She points out that we’re still both young and we need not really rush things. We’re just a bunch of persons who are in their early twenties and we still have a lot of times. She strongly emphasizes — IT WILL COME WHEN THE TIME COMES.

Then we shifted to the future and negative thoughts. She says: There’s nothing about thinking about the future but if your future thoughts are clouded with negativity, you should stop thinking about it and the more that you should stop feeding more negativity. This was her response to my negative approach and my self-incriminating nature. She said that this line of thinking will not help in building oneself, which is very true. And she also has a thing to tell about the wanting to do or plainly just doing the things that you wanted to do.

Don’t say you need to get back on track. Say that you are getting back on track. “I need, I will”. “I am”. Ang laking difference.

And then some jokes were exchanged. Would it really be a good conversation without the exchange of jokes and some pick-ups? Jokes and banters aside, It was the perfect conversation that’s worth saving and looking at because of the many realizations that I gathered. She shares that she was also like a mirror of what I am now — always rushing, always trying to fit in, and always wishing to be with someone. But soon she got it out of her system and she realized that there’s more to those things and she just needed to be with herself for the moment. She also talks about destiny, the shit that she’s been through in comparison to the rut that I’m going through right now and a couple of more topics.

Nikki was talking here and there about these things but she sent a message across: Don’t be overzealous or force yourself to be in that next big thing, most especially in trying to get in that next relationship. All along I’ve been very guilty of this. I’ve been like, “I like you so I expect you to like me back too” which is ambitious and hasty. Is it really the nature of men to try to speed up things? I don’t know. What I do know about it is that it’s my nature and I need to quickly change before I do unspeakable damage to myself. Fools rush in but if you feel good about yourself, they won’t be a problem — you won’t have a problem she says.

I learned a lot from the chit-chat we made. Even though that was short (because she had to leave for her DVD marathon), she surely imparted a lot of very great insights about my outlook about life. I’m really feeling very nice now. It helps because it’s already Christmas Vacation and I have all the reason to feel good. She stressed a lot of important things — things that are key for [my] personal happiness. But the most important bullet point that I got from her checklist is enjoying and feeling great about yourself today. That bridges the ME and TODAY that she strongly emphasized throughout the duration of our chat. As the year is about to end and 2009 is about to start, my primary checklist will be to slow things down and take time to enjoy being myself and being with myself. But to reach there, I have a lot of self-realization to do. Where am I really? I want to be happy. I should start being the change that I want to see.

• Stop rushing things too much and enjoy.
• Don’t expect too much.
• Stop thinking about the future if your thoughts are clouded with negativity.
• Feel great about yourself.

But it had to start somewhere.

It’s really a good thing that I opened up that IM window to talk with her.

What a difference five fucking hours makes.