Not sure what this is yet. I have some energy moving around this that wants out.

When you change, or when you do not fit with someone’s preconception of who you are or should be – people get weird. If you have some kind of a relationship with them, things can get messy.

When we start to change – we get weird with ourselves (as without, so within…)

I know of many others who have had more direct and confronting experiences of this who can maybe describe it more eloquently than I can. Mine is mostly my own internal freak out, and that of my family and some friends as I have pulled out more of the stops in my life…

This is a (mostly) polite rant. Or an assertion. Perhaps I am getting weird now. Keep going.

If someone does not fit your box of who they ‘should’ be; the box is wrong. If someone does not react or respond as you predict; your predictions are off. There is no right or wrong to it – it is just the way it is.

We are human. We live in a complex world of myriad relationships. We create mental shorthand to allow us to navigate complexity.

We put people into boxes so we can pull out the ‘program’ of how to relate to them. A social program – a model – we have built over our entire lives. Something we invented. It is not real. We create expectations. We train ourselves and others in how they should respond to us.

We forget it is shorthand.

It is not real.

It is not right-fucking-here-and-now.

It is not relationship dancing in this infinitely deep moment with a real, fathomless, complex human being – capable of turning on a dime and being totally and uniquely original in the moment. It is a relationship with an idea. A concept. Something that has never had a pulse or breathed on its own.

And faced with this, what happens? People get weird. React to you as you should be. You should be putting money aside, driving towards the pension, sticking in the dead-end job because all you can hope for is getting by, getting the next best holiday. Living in the bigger house, leveraging the mortgage. Having more stuff. Putting out the fucking garbage at the right time. Following the right way to do it. Following the fucking rules. My rules. That I subscribe to. That I do not realize are running my life, rather than me.

And when you don’t play by the rules? Then, stuck in this unconscious program people maybe do the same things harder to try and keep relating to you in the same way. Maybe they get angry or 7-shades of passive aggressive and TALK IN CAPITALS to have you behave in their pattern of who you should be again. And so re-establish order and consistency to make the pain of being confronted by something different go away. To make this YOU that they do not understand (how could they?) go away. What is the label on their box of you?

Why? Because you are breaking them out of their fucking comfort zones and they are freaking the fuck out that another human being can be having a life, a great life, a life containing things that maybe they could never dream of WITHOUT following their rules.

Shit! If someone can do that, then maybe they can do that and then… No that is too dangerous… Can’t do that. That will break my life. I had better not look. Close the lid on that box. Get IN the box…

So, dear reader. If you are freaking out because someone else is acting ‘outside the box’, or because you are doing something ‘just fucking crazy’ or someone is reacting to you and insisting you follow their plan (overtly or passive-aggressively) then…

Perhaps that is a good sign.

You are alive

You have a pulse

You are breathing

And aware

And growing

And breaking shit up

That was never meant to be solid in the first place…