Mark Hildreth’s Official Site

complex state of attachment

I’ve been thinking a lot about my impulse to help other people. Especially people in my family, who I have a special love for. I’m wondering whether my desire to help people is really based in an unselfish desire to make the world better, for them and indeed for all people, which is a desire I’ve had for quite some time. But then again, I’m not sure that I’m not wanting to do it for other reasons. For example, i’ve noticed a tendency I have to help other people with problems that I myself am having. It may just come down to projection, but I see other people struggling with something, and I have a very strong impulse to help them overcome it, especially if I can understand their problem because I myself am going through something I perceive as similar.

But the fact is, I very often put myself into action to help other people get through their problems and into the light, but comparitively rarely do I do this for myself. I am very unlikely to really do for myself what I am so anxious to do for others. And in any case, what they are really going through and what I percieve they are going through may be very different things, depending on my ability for insight at any given time. It so happens that I think I have fairly good insight into people. But this does not change the fact that I am quick to work through others’ problems and uncomfrotable working through my own at times. As they say, it’s always easy to see what others might need to do, but very difficult to turn that critical eye upon yourself.

My hypothesis at this point is that I am taking the easy route. That is, I am working on other people because I find it easier to realize and solve their problems than I find working on my own problems. I feel that I am breaching against myself in the sense that I am subverting my efforts onto the problems I PERCEIVE in other people and not focusing on my own issues. In this way, I am fulfilling my desire to make the world better, but not in a way that is truly effective, since I am only really working on my own projections and not actually on changing true conciousness, since I cannot really change anyone else, only they can do that to themselves. What am I so afraid of finding out about myself if I turn this well-developed problem solving ability onto myself? Am I just afraid to realize my own failures as a person? Or is there something else?

Questions to be answered in time.

Mark.