Be careful who you spend time with, you eventually come to mirror them.
It can be a scary thought, or an encouraging one. Depending on how you go about it. As it happens, I've had a fairly stimulating week. It's exciting, interacting with people who help you grow, who give you things to read and think about and discuss. Life's not always like that.
Spending time with people like that helps you see that a lot of so-called friendships in our society aren't like that at all. They're just people bound together by petty, meaningless back-and-forth parroting. By shared hatred and envies - nothing like a little hatred to bind you to somebody, is there? And you don't even realize it. You think this is what friendships must be like. Just a push and pull for attention.
Until you spend time with people who don't engage in that.
I spent a good part of the week reading up on the Greek myth of Medusa, the lady with snakes in her hair. A new friend, a painter, asked if I could help draft up a text to market a painting of Medusa. And as I have a bit of time on my hands, I delved into that, reading on the patriarchal origins of this much misunderstood myth.
I also spent some time interacting with my uncle and his girlfriend, both very intellectual types. She shared with me some poetry that simply blew me away. In fact, after I finish writing, I'm gonna go nestle on the balcony and read through it again. Fascinating, inspiring stuff.
I love relationships where someone goes "here, you gotta read this".
Someone took me to an art exhibition a couple days ago. Took me right outta my comfort zone. It's the sort of thing I would've never gone to on my own. The list goes on, and extends both to people I know on this platform and those from the outside world.
It's thrilling, having interactions that aren't based on gossip, attention-seeking and all those other little nagging elements that make up so many of our interactions. It also served as an interesting reminder to me. To seek out interactions like this. More of them. To steer towards people closer to my true self, people who are awake and realize we're only here for a brief time and ought to be making the most of it.
When I was younger, I'd think it was fate. Some divine intervention. It didn't help that the clever people I met were oftentimes men. Or that being clever, it lends you a certain nasty, overpowering edge at times that I didn't know to defend against. I always used to think "oh finally someone I can talk to".
Now I've taken myself out of that FOMO sense of eternal scarcity. I'm thinking the people I'm looking for are out there. Traceable, in their own quests. But I gotta keep myself open to them. You attract what you embody.
If out of ten conversations, 7 are about art and poems and all this fantastic stuff that's out there for the observing, then chances are next week is gonna bring more conversations of the type.
If, on the other hand, 7 outta 10 are all "look at these shoes" and "isn't so-and-so a bitch"...well, chances are next week is gonna bring more conversations of the type.
It's far more up to you than we might like to acknowledge. So choose wisely.