Your Assumptions About Love May Be Ruining Your Life
Adjusting the scope of our human connectivity.
Regardless of who you are or where you live, you know just how important relationships are. From family ties to forever friendships, close connections like these are the building blocks of how we perceive life for the most part.
Sure, we have our own lenses, drawn from our own experiences. But ultimately the people we spend the most time with are the ones that directly impact how we see the world around us.
With this realm of relationships (complete with imperfect people) comes the reality of falling short when evaluating love.
Some take the necessary steps of correcting their misjudgments, while others aren’t so quick to throw in the towel.
Either way, it’s time we reflected on how the following misconceptions about love affect our current relationships.
Misconception #1 — We Have to Agree About Everything
For the most part, people assume that in order to have perfect interactions and relationships that work, there must be 100-percent agreement on absolutely everything.
This is not true.
In fact, relationships are strengthened, examined, and valued when people don’t always see eye-to-eye on everything. In a way, it shows whether or not you actually love the other person or not.
There may be a difference of opinion about a certain issue that calls for conversations rather than debates. Unfortunately, we usually prefer to resort to the first one.
We love to be the person whose right instead of the person who asks questions, seeking to understand the reasoning behind the other’s point-of-view.
Isn’t that a huge problem in society today?
People aren’t listening. They’re spending most of their time talking.
While their mouths are opened and their tongues flap, they ignore and undermine everyone else’s ideas. They don’t see where they’re coming from and why they have the perspective in the first place.
We’ve lost the beauty of civil conversations — not all but most. And this helps no one. People aren’t able to achieve enlightenment because there are too many punches being thrown.
What we should adjust, then, is how we disagree.
Instead of being combative, ask questions to get a better understanding of their views. Funny this is, the more we do that, the more we’d come to see how wrong we may be about some things.
Misconception #2 — Humility Makes You Weak
With all of our opinions and preconceived notions, the conversations are bound to erupt in chaos. People who have believed an idea for a long period of time are bent on that standard of thought.
More often than we care to admit, our first objective is to change someone’s mind without contemplating their deep-rooted history.
We don’t always know what they’ve gone through, what they’ve experienced, or how it has impacted their worldview. The best thing to do is to start with losing our narcissism.
There is no reason for you to look down on yourself in any situation. But sometimes we think too highly of ourselves too. We are the only people worthy of being “right,” along with those who align with our worldview.
Humility goes a long way. The more humble we are, the more likely others will listen and dialogue with us.
A common question in response to this is, “But what if they don’t love you back?”
Show them respect anyway.
Our model of showing love is often blurred somewhere between “I don’t like you” and “I wish you were never born.”
We can’t seem to fathom holding in tension the views of someone else and regarding them as another human being.
But humility allows this to happen. It takes us away from seeing ourselves as the golden standard and encourages dialogue, responsibly and respectfully.
Misconception #3 — Unity Means Uniformity
People are different. This is a fact of life we can’t avoid. A fact that we should never seek to avoid. Rather, this reality should be embraced and understood to reveal the beauty of our world that exists whether we want it to or not.
Where we cross the line is in assuming that in order for there to be love, there must be people who act alike, look alike, and sound alike.
How lame is that?
Sure, there’s less friction involved. There are people who have more in common because of similar cultures, styles, and jargon.
But is that what love looks like? Is that what it represents to a society that needs a better, more effective model of relationships?
I don’t think so.
The problem is we want other people to think the way we do. Because in our world, we’re always right.
Contrary to what we may think, unity involves complexity. Unity takes different components and brings them together, like a nice, colorful salad.
The moment we look at unity in that way, we’ll be less likely to look down on someone because they aren’t our clones.
The issues that exist in the world today stem from these misconceptions (and many more). They ruin civil dialogue and impede any chance of cultural improvement.
They tear us apart.
In truth, we’re afraid of doing life together because we realize how challenging it may be. But just because something is challenging doesn’t mean you should run from it. You should pursue it with every ounce of your being.
When we address these underlining symptoms of an unhealthy society, we’ll see a change that lasts.
Kevin Horton is a photographer, student, modest book-worm, and wanna-be web developer with a new-found love for writing. He writes helpful words about creativity, productivity, and the enjoyably simple life.
’Til next time. Thanks for reading!