Yesterday, Holiday Mathis wrote about the fact that when you enter into relationships with people, these people don’t come “a la carte”. People are “package deals” with the people they have relationships with, as well. It’s like the old saying, “You don’t just marry the person. You marry the family, too.” I’ve never bought completely into that adage. I think you less marry “the family” but more so, you marry into your person’s relationship to their family and friends, and also your person’s chosen boundaries with said family and friends. So, for instance, you could like someone’s family and friends very much, but not want to spend every weekend with these people. And if your person wants to spend every weekend with these family members and friends, that’s where the conflict lies.
Along this same note, there’s a good expression that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the same person. If someone has really toxic traits that are mean or abusive or destructive, all the flowers and charm and sweet traits and talents, do not cancel out their abusive behaviors. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are a package deal. Don’t delude yourself with an abusive person, by saying that the “Mr. Hyde parts of him or her, aren’t really them. Dr. Jekyll is the ‘real’ person.” Unfortunately, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde is a package deal – one and the same.
“All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
Once, at a Christmas party, a friend of ours from Texas, commented on a huge, sparkly costume ring which I was wearing for the occasion. “Where I come from, those are called Knock Blocker rings. You can knock someone’s block off with that ring!”
Recently I purchased a couple of fun, huge, sparkly, costume rings that were on sale, at a local retail store. I completely fell for the intense colors of the center stones. One stone was a deep, grass green, and the other was an intense aqua blue. Imagine my surprise, when I got my new rings home, and I took them out the box, only to see that each center stone of both rings, now looked more of a dull, bland, brownish purple. On closer inspection of the tags, hanging on the rings, I read “color changing CZ”. When I was a child, my mother had a beautiful Alexandrite ring, that my father had brought home for her, from his military days in Turkey. I remember that ring having these types of color changing properties, as well. (Unfortunately that ring, and many other beautiful pieces of jewelry were stolen in a house robbery, when I was a child, but that story is for a different blog post, on some other day.) Sadly, my new Knock Blockers will only show their prettiest shades of green and aqua, when they are under fluorescent light. So, when I go out to my garage, my rings will look pretty again. I plan to keep these rings for their novelty, but they won’t ever become “every day pieces.”
My new rings’ color changing properties remind me of an important life lesson. I once heard the phrase “Jekyll and Hyde are the same person,” and it is one phrase that has deeply stuck in my conscience, since I heard it. We all have color changing properties. We all have the ugly, dull, brownish-violet, bruise-ish colors in us, that we try to hide from the rest of the world. All of our “true colors” run the spectrum. Still, in mostly healthy people, the most vivid, beautiful, clear colors are the prominent colors that run their lives. The ugly colors only rear their heads every once in a while, and when a healthy person notices that in themselves, they do their best to transmute and heal back to a clear shine. Healthy people integrate all of their colors, accepting that the less attractive colors are part of what makes them human and whole. Healthy people don’t have as intense color changing properties, because they are accepting of their negative thoughts and emotions. They compassionately work through their “stuff” for the betterment of themselves, and for their relationships with others. Healthy people are not fragmented people. Healthy people appear mostly the same, under any light and most circumstances.
On the other hand, unhealthy people have a tendency to shine their brightest, most fabulous colors, in the beginning of any relationship which they have with others. In fact, unhealthy people’s best colors are often many times brighter, and way more intense than anybody else’s colors, when initially getting to know them. This makes them extremely interesting and attractive and unique. However, when not in their “best light” or when not in “the spotlight”, unhealthy people can be like my new rings, reverting back to their darker, duller sides, most of the time. The rub is, we get so attracted to the few times that the unhealthy people shine brighter than anybody else, that we are willing to wait around, and put up with a lot of ugliness, in hopes for glimpses of the great beauty which we know is hidden in the depths of an unhealthy person. We know this fact about their potential beauty, better than they do, but the sad fact is, that they have to be the ones to see this fact and to accept this fact about what we already know about them. The unhealthy people have to come to the understanding, on their own, that their real, stable beauty comes from integrating all of their facets and colors, into a steadiness, instead of being at war with their divided selves. And the healthy people, have to protect their own light, by understanding that the best way to help the color changers, is to show them that integration can be done, by leading full and robust and authentic lives, with compassion and love for all, including themselves.
Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
