Fearing The Unknown

“To be without the relationship, that is to be alone with oneself, can be experienced as worse than being in the greatest pain the relationship produces because to be alone means to feel the stirrings of the great pain from the past combined with that of the present”. Women Who Love Too Much.

There is an old saying about a man who is drunk and lost his keys late at night and is looking for them by the light of a streetlight. The police comes along and offers to help him look, are you sure this is where you lost your keys? “No, but this is where the light is”.

We find people with whom we can play the same roles we did when we were growing up. We are only comfortable relating in ways that are already familiar. Even if those intimate experiences were painful, we are often unconsciously compelled to re-create similar situations throughout our lives, in drive to gain mastery over them. 

The more difficult letting go of painful situations, the more elements of the childhood struggle contains. What should feel bad has come to feel good, and what should feel good has come to feel foreign, suspect, and uncomfortable. 

The streetlight example refers to our propensity to look for whatever we are searching for in the easier places instead of where the truth will be most likely found, better said, it is about searching for answers in the wrong place.

“Fearing the Unknown” aka the feeling of not knowing. Replace fear of unknown with curiosity. Start under the streetlight, then push into the shadows and look where the light isn’t.