I don’t have any cool degree or PhD behind my name and I’m barely educated. So the following is rambling about a concept that I’ve been thinking about.
This is a lot more than should be said on the subject. Your eyes may start to bleed with my rambling.
The Medusa complex is how you see yourself, how others see you and seeing yourself in the mirror and taking an honest look at why you do what you do.
Part one
If you think some piece of your purpose in life is to please others you are living a lie that will come crashing down from time to time. Pleasing others isn’t a purpose, it’s an addiction.
You cannot ever achieve any type of happiness or peace with that addiction or any other for that matter. It’s a convenient lie, nothing else.
The reason is simple, you cannot control others and you cannot change what you cannot control, hence it is a never ending quest for a thing that is unachievable that you inherently know isn’t bringing you happiness in the process.
So why are you doing it?
Which is tantamount to saying you must love pain, misery and a level of self loathing that only you truly experience in this pointless endeavor perpetually chasing a high over terrible lows.
Sooner or later you need to realize the purpose of your life is to find peace and happiness that causes no pain to yourself or others. That is really it.
You can’t find peace through others pain and suffering and if your journey involves walking over the hopes and dreams of anyone else, you’re misguided at a minimum to think that causing pain is justified in any way. It will also always come back to you.
Part two
You do not need other people to make you happy. Period.
If you think you need other people in your life because it would be too empty without them, than, in my opinion this probably means you are too afraid of being alone at some level that you don’t understand, refuse to admit, nor does anyone else in your life grasp because it’s too painful for you to tell them and probably too painful for you to face.
Other people are in your life to help you enhance what you are and for you to enhance what they are.
You are in relationships with everyone to make that relationship better on a mutual, loving, trusting, caring and compassionate level. It has to have balance however. This process involves a lot of give and take until it is perfected. Honesty is the key.
If one of you in any given relationship is doing a disproportionate amount of that work to create mutual enhancement and joy than it is out of balance then you are back to that addiction or perhaps co-dependence. Or maybe some other cool psychology term.
When you achieve a level of self-honesty you can first face yourself and your own bullshit. After that you can face someone else and have an honest conversation about the imbalance in what the two of you are.
Very few people are at that level. Mostly because honesty is painful at first.
This is probably obvious because we don’t hear about it much, because we aren’t there. And we love to surround ourselves with reflections and dirty mirrors. It’s convenient to never look into a clean mirror. Trust me.
The secret is simply acknowledging this and now acting on it. Part of that secret is removing the concepts of blame and fault from your world view.
Those two concepts are poison. A thing we love to drink to punish others. It has never worked.
No level of another person’s anger, guilt or manipulation should sway you from a higher purpose of being honest with yourself and a goal to be a better person. If you allow that, you are back to addiction. Hence, you are choosing it. Stop that.
Part three
Most of what you believe and act on is predicated on bullshit, lies or addiction. You actually know this. But to confront it is painful because it forces you to look at your own level of self honesty.
Yes, you had dramas and traumas in your life. Don’t use comparison to make it ok, or better, or worse. Accept them. Embrace them. Work to remove the toxic elements that are residuals from these events and move on. In essence, stop letting the past define you.
Or, continue to let the past define you and be miserable, it’s just a choice. Nothing more.
Let’s face facts, the truth is painful. Lies are easy to live. We all know this. It is also a path of pain and it means you are choosing the path of pain. That sounds kind of dumb when you say it out loud.
But the other side to that sword is that you cannot be happy in lies and you cannot be happy in addiction to others, things, substances and patterns that bring you back to anything but honest personal growth.
Be honest with yourself and the choices you are making.
Part four
Go through life listening. Find truth and act on it. Watch things and wonder about them. Be a child again and let the world teach you. Find beauty in simplicity. Find kindness in the obscure. Find faith in humanity in the smallest things and work from there.
As you do this, almost instantly you will feel the spark of inner happiness building.
Be courteous, kind, forgiving, firm, factual and fair. And leave any relationship that is out of balance and caters to anything but your honest self growth. Or, accept that you won’t, and be happy in misery. It’s actually a very simple choice.
Notice the reoccurring theme; choice.
Ask why to every thing you do for a while. And when you get your first answer, ask again. Then let some time pass and ask why you came up with the answer the first two times. Repeat this process often.
This is about asking yourself, not others, you can’t control them. When you are honest with yourself about why you do what you do, you begin to find happiness because you begin to walk in the path of truth. The truth will set you free.
Answers are a prison and the key is honest questions.
Nothing on your path, or journey or whatever you choose to call it involves causing pain to yourself or others. This seems self-evident, it however is not to many people.
Perhaps more later. Enjoy your moment in time and space.
