Freedom from the other

Freedom from the other

April 2023

Suma Varughese traces her journey from being in thrall of the other  to the point of not minding what the other says or does.

Yesterday, I met a couple of  friends for lunch, both of  who were quite devoted to  me. Or so I thought. However, I  found one of them addressing all  her comments almost exclusively  to the other. She hardly addressed  me except when I addressed her.  I was bemused but not reactive.  Since then I have wondered why  the other seemed so much more  important to her than me, and  whether she really was as devoted  to me as I had thought, but there  is no anger and no withdrawal. My  regard for her is unchanged. 

And that is quite a shift for me. It  has always been very hard for me  to be neutral to what others said or  did. If someone was nice to me, I  was nice to them. If someone was  indifferent to me, I too ignored  them. And if I ever felt put down or  made less of by someone else, then  my withdrawal was quite marked. 

I remember loving this line from  one of Shakespeare’s sonnets:  “Love does not alter when it  alteration finds.” But how hard  I found to emulate it. When  someone seemed not to like me  as much as they had done earlier,  I would move into reaction mode.  Why had their behaviour changed?  Was there something wrong with  

me? I would then beat up on  myself and come to the conclusion  that I was not good enough. But  the other was not spared, either.  I would feel rejected, angry and  hurt. The emotional charge would  never really leave, and the equation  would never be the same again. 

It was almost impossible for me to  set my own standard and hold on  to it even when the other departed  from it. And the reason was my  perilous sense of self-esteem. I  took my cues from others because I  was too unsure of myself. And thus  I gave away my power. 

There was a brief period, though,  when I had acted very differently  and that was when I had just had my  enlightenment experience. At that  time, I had felt absolutely replete  within. I was my own master and I  would effortlessly lift others to my  level, instead of being reduced to  theirs. At the once-dreaded high  society parties I was compelled to  attend by virtue of being the editor  of Society magazine, I would feel  completely at ease, engage with  the most forbidding celeb, and on  the strength of my own ebullience,  cause them to relax, unwind  and open up. I had interesting  conversations with most people,  not because they had changed but  because I had changed. 

That period lasted for a year and  after that, I was back to where  I had started from, uneasy and  unsure about myself, but with a  burning determination to change  and become the person I had  glimpsed I was in that year. The  intervening years have enabled  me to free myself of a lot of the  baggage that crippled me. My self esteem, particularly, has risen to  respectable proportions. It may  not be perfect, but I am getting  there. And I can envisage a time  when I can finally free myself of  the influence of others and be  myself in all situations. 

In this state of perfect ease with  ourselves, we no longer mind  where the other is coming from  because it has not the slightest  influence on us. On the other  hand, our composure, our smiling  amity, may actually unfreeze the  other and cause him or her to  climb down from his hauteur. That  is freedom, my friends. 

Suma Varughese is a thinker,  writer, and former Editor-in Chief of Life Positive. She also  holds writer’s workshops. Write  

to her at sumavarughese@ hotmail.com. We welcome your comments and suggestions on  this article. Mail us at editor@lifepositive.net