Patterns

Seems to be the topic of conversation of late. People and their actions and their attractions. At the moment, each of my good friends is at a different stage of her own pattern. One is at the very beginning, mostly avoiding the discussion about how she's falling into pattern, silently telling herself this time is different. Another is firmly in the middle, though perhaps just past middle, finally starting to see her pattern, finally starting to fight against it, but still living it daily. Yet another is at the end of a cycle, feeling somewhat smug about her new-found strength, but of course part of her pattern is also a cycle of ending things, but then not really ending them, so who knows if it will really stick this time? And then there is me. Well past middle and right before the end of my pattern.

And so conversation with my friends has been about patterns. Mine or theirs, depending on where the focus ended up, depending on who was receptive to listening and who wasn't, depending on who was hurting and who isn't. The pattern is seductive. It feels so natural. It's no wonder we all fall back into it time and time again. But time and time again it is simply not right. It's not that one day the right pattern match is going to show up and suddenly work, the attraction is actually to all those things that guarantee that it will never work correctly. So it's a deceptive mentality. We desire our patterns, but by desiring them, we seek the very thing that cannot fulfill us no matter what.

Except the pattern is always so shining and bright in the beginning. It's always so easy to make excuses, or to give someone the benefit of the doubt because really, me and my friends are generally nice people who try to do the right thing. But to break your pattern you have to be selfish. You have to be a not nice person. You have to stop forgiving, stop making excuses, stop brushing under the rug. You have to be aggressive about yourself and your needs and your expectations. Maybe that's really the heart of the problem. Learning to prioritize yourself and your expectations and requirements above anyone else's.

Is it folly to expect that one can break their pattern? One must be able to. People always talk about how they changed their type, their method, their actions and all of the sudden they found the right person. But while easy to say, it's not easy to do. Because for as much pain as the pattern brings, it brings joy as well in the 'almost perfect but not quite' sense. It's that taste of almost perfect that keeps us in our patterns. Keeps us hoping for a change or a variation that won't end us up in exactly the same spot. Maybe it's Nature's way of guaranteeing we don't get to reproduce. Maybe our pattern flaws are symptomatic of a wider genetic malfunction. It would be nice to believe in a bigger picture, to allow a reason for all this needless torture. But I think that it's just life. Either you manage to pull your shit together, or all you're left with is a lifetime of patterns.