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I remember very distinctly how my elder brother Mohammed wanted me to pursue a career in media. he wanted me to become a photographer or a videographer, or whatever lived in that space. I do not know whether he saw my talent, or whether he simply noticed how much I loved it. the truth is I did love it. but at the time, I was lost in myself, I wasn’t clear about my love to this particular hobby, I was fooled by the glaring effect of science and progress. and to be fair, it is glaring.
There was a time in my life when I allowed myself to be uncertain. uncertainty was my mindset. it did not affect the technical side of my questions, nor did it damage my daily decision making on the surface. but internally, I sometimes drowned in it. the paradox of choices embedded itself into my behavior, and perfectionism became a side effect of refusing to pick what felt suboptimal. I lived inside my head more than I realized. this state was invisible to the external world. it was entirely internal. I was doubting my own internals.
When I turned thirteen, something shifted in me. it was not dramatic on the outside, but internally everything felt rearranged. I was lost in a way I could not articulate. I could not understand my emotions, nor my behavior, nor the sudden cynicism that began to color the way I saw the world. I became negative, sharp, and difficult, and I started affecting the people around me without even noticing.
No matter how open, peaceful or loving you are, others can only connect with you at the depth they have reached within themselves.
This realization came to me at twenty one, and it was not gentle. it hurt to admit. I come from a spectrum of people who were never fully able to see others clearly , but I was not one of them. I was always good at analyzing people. I understood patterns, motives, insecurities. I even played the therapist role many times in my life, something I wrote about briefly here . understanding people was not magic. it is a basic human feature if you pay enough attention. the contradiction that confused me for years was this: I could understand almost everyone, yet I struggled to truly connect with them.
I basically ruined all the friendships I had since I was a kid, and it is me who is the problem, not the people, although I kept myself busy to the point where I don’t feel it most of the time, alongside guilt and fear of making new friendships.
Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you will understand how foolish it is to think you can change someone else.
— Matthew Hussey