It can be illuminating to notice what others bring you, and what they don’t. Or, said another way, to pay attention to what shows up around you.
Do people bring you their anger, or only their gentleness?
Do they make requests of you? Do they offer support?
Will people tell you what they really think?
Do they challenge? Or do they quickly fall into agreement with you?
Do they show you what they’re feeling?
Or is it more often the rational, intellectual side of people that gets shown in your presence?
These repeating patterns may be so difficult to see that you take them to simply be the way the world is. But this obscures that you’re actively involved in shaping the responses of everyone you meet. Your subtle cues – in language, expression, body – tell people much about what they can bring. You are always in the middle of allowing or discouraging, managing (or, put more strongly, manipulating) what can be expressed.
In this way what shows up is not solely the way the world is, but a manifestation of your engagement with it.
This can be illuminating to see, because you may well be actively involved in making it difficult for certain kinds of expression, certain kinds of topic, and certain kinds of mood to be expressed in your presence.
And the result of that is a kind of impoverishment, for everyone.
