Trying To Make Ourselves Make Sense

I keep coming back to this idea that maybe a lot of what we call self-understanding isn't actually understanding ourselves at all.

Maybe it's trying to make ourselves make sense.

Those feel like different things.

Because when I look back at periods of my life, particularly the ones that felt emotionally complicated, I can see how much energy went into trying to arrive at a version of myself that was coherent.

The version that made sense.

The version that fitted together.

The version where all the pieces pointed in the same direction.

And life just doesn't seem to work like that.

People don't work like that.

I don't work like that.

I can want independence and desperately want to be chosen.

I can know something is wrong and still not want it to end.

I can love somebody and be angry with them.

I can understand exactly why I am behaving in a certain way and still continue behaving in that way.

For a long time I thought the goal was to resolve these contradictions.

To get to the bottom of them.

To explain them.

To understand them so completely that they stopped being contradictory.

What I'm not sure I understood is how much energy was being spent negotiating with the fact they existed in the first place.

Not the feeling itself.

The argument with the feeling.

Not the need.

The argument with the need.

Not the truth.

The argument with the truth.

I think that's why certain moments in life can feel unexpectedly relieving.

Not because anything has changed.

Because the argument stops.

The thing you've known for months finally gets acknowledged.

The feeling you've been explaining away finally gets admitted.

The part of yourself you've been trying to edit out gets allowed back into the picture.

And suddenly all of that energy becomes available for something else.

I don't think self-understanding is really about figuring yourself out.

I think it might be about spending less time trying to make yourself make sense.