Early last week, the iconic, “you complete me” from Jerry Maguire hit me right between the ears. Even for a guy who semi-secretly likes rom-coms, that line kinda gives me the heaves.
After my momentary lunch losing false alarm passed, I thought, “hmmm, interesting”. (“Hmmm, interesting”, is my default response when I don’t know about something, but I want to think about it more).
Jumping on the contrarian train, I thought logically, “you complete me”, implies a deficiency of self in the absence of said person, aka the “you”. Whoever the “you” is at the time doesn’t really matter for blogosphere purposes. Basically, because of “you”, only then can a person be whole. Or so, TriStar Pictures would have us believe (insert gentle cynicism here). As I kept going with my thinking, I really started disagreeing with Tom Cruise – shoulda just stuck with being Maverick and Les Grossman. Granted, I can’t entirely blame Cole Trickle for my serene discontent. This whole business of “finding” that special person to substantiate our existence isn’t really a new concept.
To be precisely poignant and shed my slight discrimination toward the human race as being the culprit here, we actually try to “complete” ourselves from any number of sources; work, substances, sex, food, fitness, money, philanthropy and, as noted, relationships. It’s all part of a belief system that has us convinced we need more than ourselves to become who we think we need to be. And, that without the “more”, we’re not really anything at all.
As you’re probably expecting me to say, everything you need, you already have. You complete you! You, is what makes you whole. It’s not your family or your job or how much you volunteer or your khakis. It’s just you. Those are all wonderful parts of life, but think of someone that has lost their parents or is single; isn’t career focused, spends their free time reading and hates Dockers. Can they never, then, be complete? Doesn’t seem fair or logical that they shouldn’t have the same opportunity to do so as someone who lives the typical, “career, family, white picket fence” life.
We all have a Heart. And, we all have the ability to be Love. It’s that which makes us complete. All of life’s goals and successes, or lack thereof, are amazing! Truly, they are. It’s important to create a sense of meaning and purpose this way. But, when they act as distractions or deterrents to finding our true self, they lead us on the path of emptiness. We create the ability to experience that void with the attachments we seek. I promise that the key to feeling complete is by knowing that you have everything inside your Heart. The rest will be there waiting for you, not you waiting for it.
We may not know each other, but I know that who you are is perfect. It’s corny and it’s cliché, but it’s the truth. Knowing that all you need is you, allows you to choose Love. And, choosing Love makes every other decision in life for you. Let Love be the whole in your Heart.
be Love.
Each person has their own standard of what constitute a complete life. Back home, people say when a girl gets married and has her own child, then at that point her life is complete. I totally disagree because I have seen so many friends back home have made that far, but their life is far from complete; and lots of them even have never thought about what complete really means. In my opinion, complete is to live the best out of your life by being you and do all the things that you want to do. I used to care what other people think or react; but recently I have changed. My country has thousands of years of history, and personally I am very interested at learning the history as learning is a life long journey. My country has been falling down and standing up in the past. Thanks to those brave people in the past who haven chosen to fight and sacrifice in order to create the peaceful world that I am living and breathing now, so I have to treasure my life. Thus, I decide not to worry about those small things that don’t matter, but just to live the life as much as I can as I am so lucky to have this kind of life. For those brave people in the past, it is their love made them to sacrifice their lives to make my country a better place, for me and others who are enjoying our lives now, it is our love to live the best as we can to love back those who have sacrificed. I am not currently living in my home country, but because of those brave people who have sacrificed their lives have created so many opportunities to the young generations like me. I feel appreciated and that is why I decided to let small things go. I used to feel upset if someone has deleted me on the social network, now I stopped checking who is adding or deleting me. Real friends are not just replying or forwarding or clicking “like” of your facebook, twitter, etc; or hang out with you all the time. Real friends are the ones who really care for you and support you and help you when you are in a rough time. Friendship and relationship are not a show, people who are showing around their friendship or relationship both on social network or real life, their relationship are like glasses and can be broken at any time. Real friendship and relationship are like diamond, which doesn’t involve showing people around in a way of telling people “we are BFF” or “this is my…” , or “look at me, I got this person’s attention”, so childish and immature. If someone tells me again that my life is not complete, fine, because they only see one side of me and I and everyone have multiple aspects. Ourselves can’t be read in any separate part but have to be read as a whole: our thought, our heart, our love, our background, our knowledge and our understanding of life. Take care!
One more thought, no body completes or deletes me. Whether my life is complete or not, it is totally up to me. I feel sorry sometimes by wasting my time on someone or something that is not worth it. Well too late as I can’t undo what has happened in the past, but I can change my future. Take care!
I agree that society has created ideals whereby it makes us believe we need “this” or “that” to be complete. Like you mentioned, a woman is viewed to only be complete upon marriage and giving birth to a child. Yet, a person’s life is complete however they believe it to be from their Heart.
Often, I don’t think we try to discover why we are complete simply because of who we are. But rather, we search for outside things and reasons and relationships to make us whole. The tough part about that is that whatever is outside of you, can be taken away from you or lost. Because of this, we fear that a loss of any of these things will leave us broken and incomplete. By choosing to believe we are complete because of who we are inside and only that, we can never feel empty. No one or thing can take us away from us. We will always have our Heart and the Love we choose inside of us.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. 🙂
be Love.