Caffeine

and now I remember why caffeine was a bad idea.  even before i had any inkling that I had an allergy to caffeine, I knew never to consume any of it after 11 am.  I'm really sensitive to it, and it prevents me from sleeping.  I can't sleep now.  I have to be up at 6, and i thought i was tired til i turned out the light and did my meditation tape.  My mind is racing.  Didn't I talk and write enough?  Apparently not.  I though of other stuff to contemplate.  

My brother.  "I want to hurt my friends.  Did you really move to pursue your career?  or did you just want to get away from people?" he asked me.  Really?  I was always so concerned about my career, that I forgot people really existed.  We've always had very different approaches to life and friends.  I only recently acknowledged how important it is to have friends, but that has always been really important to him.  Therefore, I can see how upsetting it would be to tire of the people you hang out with.  I've never EVER been willing to compromise my goals or ideas to fit in with a group (which...yes...sounds completely contrary to my last post).  When I was little, if my friends wanted to play dolls instead of climb trees, I decided they were dumb and boring, and that I would get different friends.  If that meant being alone until I found better friends, fine.  At least I'd be climbing trees in the mean time.  My brother was more the type to sacrifice what he wanted to do to be with people.  I don't think there's anything wrong with either way.  There's a balance between the 2, and we both have struggled on opposite extremes.  I pretty much do what i want to do, and expect that to attract other people who like doing the same things.  I need to expand that to saying what I think and feel, to attract people with similar ideas and morals.  I could also benefit from being more flexible, and compromising some of my plans to accommodate people I really like spending time with.  My brother on the other hand, I think could benefit from some time away from those people.  I know it's not my job to take his inventory, but he asked me for advice, and i'm muddling through it now, so that i'll be more coherent when i talk to him.  We all want to feel loved and accepted.  My bass-akwards strategy has always to be incredible at whatever i do, and impress everyone into liking me.  To be perfect.  He seems to take a more direct approach to fitting in, and has fallen into common high school and college traps: drugs, smoking, alcohol...I feel like he has no idea what he wants, or what he's passionate about.  I wish i could help him find it.  It just seems like life is so painful for him, and he just wants the time to pass faster.  I don't really know, but between smoking, drinking, and television, I feel like he always has something to numb out with.  You know?  We do different behaviors to address the same kind of spiritual hole.  In a way, a long time ago, he sacrificed a lot of who he was to fit in with these "friends", and now he's finally realizing that maybe they're not really good friends.  Maybe they're not the kind of people who he wants to be around.  But he doesn't know how to be alone.  It's hard to make new friends.  Especially when you've become like them.  Even if you leave them, you attract more people like you, and if you're behaving like them, well you just get more of the same people.  Maybe that's one of the reasons I was always so quick to abandon friends when i learned something about them that i didn't like.  I think I've always been a little scared of people's undesirable qualities rubbing off on me.  That's one of the things that keeps me so isolated.  I'm so quick to pick out whatever I don't like about a person, and run from it.  These days, I practice instead focusing on the positive things I see, and try to connect with that, but that's definitely a work in progress, and still in the beginning phases.  We have so much to learn.

Basically, I think we were both missing the point, which is:

to connect with people, be true to yourself, and have faith in a higher power.

He preoccupied himself with the connecting with people part, and mistook it for being with people and doing what they're doing.  it's not the same as connecting, and it doesn't mean anything if you're not true to yourself.

I locked in on being true to myself, only I got it wrong too.  Instead I "did what I wanted".  I still lost touch with the true inner me, and drove away the people I needed to connect with.

It leaves us both with an empty hole, and neither of us had any faith in a higher power.  I'm so grateful to be on the path to finding my higher power, and to be learning to be true to myself and connect with people.  Sometimes, it really clicks, and I feel so fulfilled and loved and happy.  I hope I can help him to find it too.