Right Now, Becoming Who I Am Is Far More Important Than Falling In Love

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Have you ever seen one of those classic superhero movie intro scenes? For some reason there’s always a young kid, usually after some tragic family accident, who just found out who he really is, and who’s staring at the superhero costume hanging on the wall, knowing that one day he’s supposed to wear it.

I am not saying that I am going to be a superhero or that I have a superhero costume on my wall at home (though both of those things would be totally awesome) but sometimes I feel exactly like that. Why? Because just like the kid, I am now aware, more than ever before, how much I need to grow to become someone I need and want to be. And just like the kid in the movie who realizes that he is not going to be like the other boys, I realize that if I want to grow, something has to change.

Pretty much most of my teenage and early adult life, my attention has been always focused on girls and relationships of some sort. Of course I did loads of other stuff as well, but at the end of the day, what was going on in the love department was by far the most important and it set the tone of my daily life. And it didn’t really matter whether it was falling in and out of love or just sleeping around to boost my ego. When someone asked me about my life, the first thing I would think about were my relationships at the time. And the answer depended almost entirely on how I was handling my love affairs at the moment. (And usually, I was terrible at it).

Somehow, that’s different now. The thing is, dating/relationships/friends with benefits/whatever, they all take a LOT of time and energy. And even though I risk sounding like middle aged woman right after a divorce with her cheating husband, I have to and want to invest all that time and energy in myself instead. Invest in my self-improvement, so I can grow into that costume on my wall someday. I may not have an exact plan for the future. To be totally honest I have no idea where the road and the future will take me.

But I am pretty sure about who I want to be, no matter where I’ll end up.

I want to be independent, being able to take care of myself, knowing that I am strong enough on my own to deal with whatever life throws at me. I want to be someone who has compassion and cares about the world outside of himself, thinks about more than his personal benefits and actually takes action to help others.

I want to be someone who has enough life experience gathered all around the world that makes him able to see things from more different perspectives than just his own.

A person who’s there for his friends and family when they need him. And someone who can motivate others, leads by example and shows them a way when their stumbling on their own path.

Maybe there are people who can do that, keep growing and evolving like that, even when they are in a relationship – or perhaps especially when they are in a relationship. But I know that I can’t, that I am not like that. And it’s not just not having the time or energy to keep pushing yourself forward when you are with someone.

The thing is, that even though it’s great to have people who got your back and support you, there are still some things in life that you have to go through on your own.

I’m not saying here that I want to live like a Buddhist monk somewhere in the mountains of Tibet – there are too many awesome and fascinating people in the world for you to start isolating yourself.

You should go out, meet people, enjoy everything you’ve been given and have fun. And I’m not even saying that if I meet a girl and fell madly in love, I’ll send her away because I have a 6 a.m. yoga class or whatever. But I know that right now being in a serious relationship is not something that matters or actually makes sense to me – and I’m perfectly fine with this.