(10-21-2012, 04:19 AM)nats Wrote: hi tweeter, i think what you're saying here is extremely valid and important for all of us. it may not directly help Charity's struggles, but the balance between kindness (i.e. compassion) without unintentionally sacrificing yourself/ves and staying true to self/ves - e.g. some kind of emotional equity or ethics - is probably what allows us to be properly human. 
we definitely don't have the balance right but can sometimes see the goal. 
Thank you, nats.
Being "properly human" is an art with variations.
I used to fixate on the Shakespearean line, "To thine own self be true." I don't anymore, since I straightened it out -- what I am, what I would have liked to Be, and what was/is expected from me by authority figures (old and new).
The quote was replaced by humor, at first:
"Be yourself. Everyone else is taken."
And then,
"The perfect is the enemy of the good." (Voltaire)
Seeing self(ves) thru the eyes of another happens with parent and child, as well as in other situations. But, a fundamental cornerstone of how we first feel about ourselves comes from that primary interaction. If it is sufficiently destructive (absent or ab*s*ve), I can see how there could be a need to replace the mother figure (to feel loved and nurtured as one should have been from the beginning) even when older.
I haven't experienced that emotional vacant hole in the heart as described, possibly because I was able to absorb that more easily elsewhere to a degree. But there was continued insufficiency in other areas: nurturing myself and others (outside of hygiene, which my mother excelled at); not feeling worthy of success and allowing others to destroy it (which mother also excelled at). I'm working on repairing, because I have to win back something I lost.
Being an unloved and unwanted child has side effects.
tweets
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