The Pursuit of Singleness

I was walking home from work on a summer eve last year when I received  the inspiration for a new book. It came as a single word. I’d hopped off the train and opted for a lengthy walk the last couple of miles it took to get to my house. I fancy such walks not just as a needed exercise but as a means to declutter my mind. At the time, I did not realize how much I needed to be found.

I had ended a relationship the previous year, hastily walked into another which had also ended right before that summer and I was on the verge of yet another which some moments of hard truth led me to acknowledge was not the right one for me.

It was the summer I turned twenty-five but assuredly felt thirty. I have always been older than my age. Although not a stranger to heartbreaks and broken hopes I was still very much hopeful. Albeit not as innocent as I had been before my first heartbreak, I was still young and cheerful. But even in my optimistic and carefree state, I always felt the weight of purpose and was always cognizant of the fact that time was a winged gift that keeps flying.

Marriage was on my mind. Not for the reason most people want marriage or for the reason most people want to get married. Rather marriage was one of the accomplishments I thought I needed to check off my list, so I can move on to the next. As a woman who has chosen addressing marital issues as a viable profession, I know marriage is a critical determinant in how people would respond to me.

But wanting marriage as a means to an end is not enough reason to enter into that covenant. It requires more care and delicacy has I have come to learn through various experiences, mine and that of others.

Marriage, arguable, requires first and foremost finding who you are and being firmly established in that identity that nothing or no one can change it. Our individuality tends to fade away in the shuffle to be an “us”. We often fail to comprehend it is most important for us to be a whole individual and be fully confident in who we are before conjoining ourselves to another. I said as much in The Colorful Path.

Some of us have had a number of relationships in which we lost a little piece of who we are. In an attempt to make it work, we often conform to the taste of the other person, whereby we become who they want us to be not who we genuinely are. In a perfect case scenario, we should all be accepted for who we are. But every relationship has a form of conformity, even successful ones.

For those of us who have invested time, money, and effort into relationships that ended up failing, we need to take time to rediscover ourselves. But often we jump into the next, repeating the same cycle. When only if we would just take the time to be truly single we would recognize we may have never initiated any of those relationships to begin with.

For many of us, after a relationship ends, we realize we deserve better but then we move on to the next only to have that fail as well, bringing us to the same conclusion again, “I deserve better.” But why do we keep repeating these circles?

My hypothesis is that we do not spend enough time being who we are. What do I mean by that? Many of us do not invest quality time in discovering and building ourselves, so it becomes very easy to fall into wrong relationships, firstly because, we attract who we are, and secondly because we do not have enough self-esteem or confidence to wait for or go for what we truly deserve. And so, we settle until we are forced to break free or break up. If only we would elevate ourselves to that level of completeness and complete confidence, we would discover we do not need anyone to begin with, because we are not lacking anything. And if someone does come along, they are there to complement us, not fill up a missing void.

And for those of us in a relationship, that shouldn’t be the end of your self-discovery either. We often make the mistake of priming ourselves for the right person and when that person appears we abandon that course. Not understanding that refining ourselves should be a continuous process. This explains to a large extent why many relationships fail. We package ourselves to look good so we could get somebody, and when we get them, they discover the real deal is no good.

All these nuggets of wisdom, I did not appreciate that summer eve when the word Found was dropped into my spirit. It was after yet another failed relationship that I discerned that the word was not so much for the many readers I hope will read the book, but rather for me. I needed to be found.

Many of us need to find ourselves or rediscover who we are. We need to understand that we are not defined by a relationship or a lack of it. Singleness is not a transitory phase, it’s a continuous state of being whether or not we are in a relationship. We need to persistently pursue what makes us unique, attractive and valuable. Some of us used to be so confident, but we lost it and some of us just never had it. And so, we hold ourselves back from going after what we truly deserve, not only in relationship but in other aspects of life.

We need to rebuild our confidence. Invest time, money and energy into cultivating ourselves. You are your own best asset. You cannot be of value to another person if you do not first and foremost value yourself.

This is the goal I have set before me in 2019 and I invite you all who are reading this to join me on this journey of self-discovery and enhancement. Depending on what stage we all are in our lives, we can always start from somewhere. As long as we remain humans, we can always find areas in which we can improve.

I welcome you all into the year 2019. I pray with all my heart it is for you the best year of your life yet!

Share this...

Facebook

Google+

Twitter

Linkedin