I’ve left many things because I wasn’t happy: relationships, friendships, houses, cities, and jobs. I recall in those experiences saying that I just wasn’t happy. I wasn’t always clear on why I was feeling down, but I would feel softer once I gained distance, and I felt that I was able to see with more clarity. The thing was, sometimes I was creating distance from the thing within me that needed my attention. Not everything was about others. If we’re constantly leaving things because we feel unhappy, and we’re finding issues with most situations in our lives, it is most likely an ‘us’ issue that needs tending.
Could happiness be a close relative of arrogance? Could chasing the proverbial state of ‘happiness’ become a way of allowing arrogance to be sitting in the driver’s seat of our minds? Arrogance is a residue in the body, it inhabits the subtlety of our physical and emotional structure. Arrogance has force: it wants to be known: it wants us to see it. It holds on tight to ideas of individualism, such as not needing anyone else or thinking that we are better than others or know better than others.
It pushes people away by judging them, and arrogance prevents us from seeing ourselves. It makes us blame others for how we feel. Arrogance often has big feelings, which we may or may not share with others, but it likes to announce itself with certainty and it lacks curiosity. It wants to hide our brokenness; it wants to collaborate with our entitlement.
It’s possible that the wanting for happiness is arrogance’s desire for control. Arrogance believes we can have it all, that we are entitled to all that we want.
I’ve been the person who runs from things, but in truth I was running from myself. This was a convenient way to not deal with the dilemmas I felt internally and blamed on external things. I was putting myself in situations that would cause pain in order to wake up the part of myself that was most in need of attention. It was my arrogance that would put the blame on others, but it was also my lack of self-knowledge.
It’s arrogant to believe that our challenges are only caused by external forces. In fact, a lot of what we’re experiencing mirrors our inner world and belief system. We don’t feel connected to others because we’re not connected to ourselves; we don’t feel heard because we’re not listening to what we truly need; and we feel abandoned because we’ve spent most of our lives abandoning the precious and quiet parts of ourselves.
Once I started to slow down and be in experiences with more awareness, I began to see that I was the one costing me joy. This wasn’t achieved by simply being aware. Many people I’ve worked with over the years have gently supported me as I started to understand myself. This has not been a solo journey. Learning to expose ourselves to ourselves requires professionals who are able to hold us gently.
In almost all of the situations I mentioned, including the years of running from myself, I was struggling with the same thing: I didn’t feel respected. I was choosing relationships and environments that didn’t respect me. But it’s more nuanced than that, because I didn’t respect myself, so I kept aligning myself with others who didn’t respect me.
I had to first address the way I wasn’t respecting myself, the way I was treating myself poorly, how I wasn’t listening to what I needed, and how I was doing what others wanted. This has been a lengthy process yet a revealing one that bleeds into every aspect of my life.
Arrogance is part of the human chemistry that resides in all of us, not a single one of us evades this characteristic. This part of us is capable of fabricating grandiose stories about what’s wrong with others and the world in order to maintain its importance. Our disdain doesn’t want to be disrespected; it often wants to hold tight to controlling our lives.
It takes years of gently looking at these traits in ourselves to soften their control over our minds and belief system. We all carry this, yet if we could understand this we might spend less time pointing our fingers outward in disdain and more time finding ways to soften the battle with our arrogance. It could change the world, one person at a time.