Why You Feel Lonely How Your Greatest Fear is Affecting Your Relationships – Matthew Kelly – 60 Second Wisdom
“You may be afraid of flying, spiders, heights, and snakes, but there is one fear that dominates the human experience. We all have it. It’s our greatest fear. It sabotages relationships. It produces existential loneliness.
We’re afraid that if people really knew us, they wouldn’t love us. That’s our greatest fear.
The real tragedy is that by pretending to be the person we think other people want us to be, we destroy our chances at really being loved. Because when someone does come along to say, “I love you” there’s a little voice in our head that says, “No you don’t. You love the person you think I am.” This is how people end up desperately lonely in a relationship.
Hugh Prather observed, “Some people are going to like me and some won’t. So I might as well be myself, and then at least I’ll know that the people who like me, like me.””
“The seven levels of intimacy is a model designed to provide insight into the ways we relate with different people. If your relationship with your friendly barista is confined to the first three levels of intimacy, that’s fine. But if your marriage is confined to the first three levels, you’ve got a problem.
The seven levels of intimacy are: 1. Cliches 2. Facts 3. Opinions 4. Hopes and Dreams 5. Feelings 6. Fears, Faults, and Failures, and 7. Legitimate Needs
Intimacy is the one thing a person cannot live happily without. We can live happily without new cars, designer clothes, dream homes, exotic vacations—but we cannot live happily without intimacy. You can survive without intimacy, but you cannot thrive without it.
“The world is full of wonders and it’s amazing how seldom we take time to appreciate and enjoy them. When we don’t appreciate the wonders around us, it’s a sure sign that we are neglecting the wonders within.
Here are 13 simple pleasures that will supercharge your relationships and recharge your batteries:
1. Sit on a park bench. 2. Wake before dawn and watch the sunrise. 3. Drive with the windows down. 4. Sit down and really enjoy your coffee. 5. Take a long hot bath. 6. Hot chocolate. 7. Watch your favorite movie. 8. Turn your phone off for a day. 9. Write a letter (not an email, an actual letter, stamp and all!). 10. Go hiking. 11. Look through your photos. 12. Take a nap. 13. Curl up on the couch with a great book.
It always comes down to the simple things. It is the ordinary things we ignore that have the capacity to make our lives extraordinarily fulfilling and beautiful.”
What do you do when life gets difficult? When a relationship or a job gets rocky? Or when your spiritual belief is challenged? Giving up is always an option—and it’s usually the easiest one. Today, Allen reminds us of the other option on the table…
“If we are a little envious of one person or another, we don’t contain our envy but sometimes share it with others by speaking badly about the person. This is how gossip seeks to grow and spread to another person and yet another. This is the way gossip works, and we have all been tempted to gossip. I too have been tempted to gossip! It is a daily temptation that begins slowly, like a trickle of water. This is why we have to be careful when we feel something in our heart that would lead to destroying people, destroying reputations, destroying our lives, leading us into worldliness and sin. We must be careful because if we do not stop ourselves in time, that trickle of water, when it grows and spreads, will become a tidal wave that leads us to justify ourselves, just as the people from the day’s Gospel justified themselves and eventually said of Jesus: “It is better that one man die for the people.”—Pope Francis
The tension in the Gospel of John, even more than in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, is that from the beginning, Jesus is clearly the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God. If all we have are the Synoptic Gospels, we can almost be persuaded that Jesus of Nazareth was a good and holy man who went about the countryside teaching people about God, healing their diseases, and preaching a moral lifestyle. In the Gospel of John, we have to wrestle with the fact that this good and holy man is in fact the human manifestation of the one, true God. And yet, Pope Francis always finds a way of bringing lofty theology to a level where we can see clearly how it can have an impact on our everyday lives. One of his frequent themes is the danger of gossip. Here he reminds us that our very tendency to dismiss it as a minor failing belies the danger it can have in disrupting relationships, social structures, and ultimately lives.
We have opportunities every single day to say no to gossip. Find a way to pay attention to those opportunities for the next few days. You might want to keep a paper tally, a click of a counter app on your phone, moving a small item (a paperclip, a pebble, a dried bean) from one pocket to another. Just the act of noting these times may be enough of a reminder not to indulge in this seemingly minor sin.
