You Can’t Provide Awareness For Another
Awareness is an individual inside job.
Genuine, nontoxic positivity is relatively easy to find. Unfortunately, real positive things are easily eclipsed by – *waves around, inarticulately, at the current world situation* – all of this. Some weeks, it’s especially hard to write about this, because various and sundry things keep it hidden and make it look disingenuous and false.
I love watching people. Seeing how people are, their body language, expressions, how they carry themselves, and such, is utterly fascinating. But what’s often more fascinating, and equally disturbing, is how utterly unaware they tend to be.
While to some degree, I’m talking about situational awareness regarding what’s around them, to a greater degree, I’m talking about self-awareness. Not in-depth, mindful conscious awareness, I mean a generalized awareness of self in a given situation.
What do I mean? Have you ever been with someone, and they said something that just floored you? Not because it was mean, callous, or intentionally fraught. More like they said something that just seemed to utterly not read the room or the people around them? Like, you wonder if they even hear themselves when they speak?
This can be personal and impersonal. Near the end of his life, I saw the comedian George Carlin performing at a venue in Massachusetts or New Hampshire. He was on a tear, one of his kind-of-funny-but-more-cranky rants, and he negatively referenced the New England Patriots. In the heart of New England. That went over like a lead balloon, and for someone who came across as usually highly aware, he utterly failed to read the room.
When it’s personal, a friend or loved one, it’s harder to hear or otherwise witness. And you can’t give awareness to another.
Only you are in your head
Many things in the world around us seek to influence us. Some are fairly harmless and unintentional, while some are detrimental with full malice of forethought behind them. Advertising tends to fall to the former while politicians tend to fall to the latter. Some are subtle, some utterly flagrant.
Some people are more susceptible to being influenced than others. That depends on what media you consume, how much time and energy you give to various things, and if you consciously analyze what you receive, versus allowing it to soak into your subconscious unchecked. The more subconsciously, by rote and routine, you live, the more likely you are to be influenced by outside forces.
That’s because you’re the only one inside your head. Only you can think, feel, and act for yourself. People can tell you what to think, how to act, and what to do. But you are the one who chooses it. Or not.
Likewise, you’re the only one inside your heart and soul. You alone choose how to apply kindness, compassion, and empathy – or not. Only you can determine your moral and ethical code.
The problem with this is that to take control, you need to work on being actively consciously aware. That’s the practice of mindfulness. And mindfulness requires awareness.
While you can show the way and offer guidance, you can’t provide awareness to/for another.
Awareness is an inside job
You alone ultimately know who, what, where, how, and why you are. This is gained from becoming consciously aware. That requires mindfulness, because otherwise the subconscious is doing the work.
What does that look like? It’s living mainly by rote, routine, and habit. You go with the flow and allow life to carry you along the current of each day. To be fair, there are times when taking this approach is good for your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health, wellness, and wellbeing. But living subconsciously too often comes with a price.
That price is uncertainty, dissatisfaction, and a feeling that you have no control over anything. It’s waking up one day and wondering how the hell you are where you are, and questioning the who, what, where, how, and why of multiple aspects of your life.
Awareness is an inside job. It begins within you. To be aware of the world outside of you, it’s important to apply active conscious awareness to look inside your head, heart, and soul.
Doing this only requires you to be present, here and now, and ask questions like,
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What do I intend here/with this/from this?
- Is my approach to this positive or negative?
- What am I doing/what action(s) am I taking?
Each can only be genuinely answered in the here and now. And that activates conscious awareness. Once you’re aware of your inner being, it becomes easier to gain more awareness of the world around you.
But you can’t do this for anyone else.
You can’t make them see what you see
There are people, innocently and with good and ill intent, who want you to share their perspective. The innocent are generally those who just want to fit in, find their tribe, and make connections, more often than not. Good intent is the people who have been oppressed by systemic racism, sexism, and worse, desiring that we understand their struggles. Ill intent is white supremacists and homophobic people who think that the “pie” is limited rather than infinite.
No matter what it is, innocence, good, or ill, you can’t make anyone else see the world how you see it. It’s impossible to reach into someone else’s head, heart, or soul, and get them to wake up when they seem asleep at the switch. And when it’s someone you love or care about deeply, this is infuriating.
Do you even hear yourself? tends to fall on deaf ears. Pointing out inconsistencies, logical flaws, and fallacies can’t, won’t, and doesn’t make anyone else become aware. That’s because you can’t provide awareness for another.
What can you do? Be aware yourself. Practice mindfulness, do things that are kind, compassionate, and empathetic. Be a good person and offer to help others in a world where that’s becoming less and less the way. Because in truth, I’m pretty sure more people want good for all than otherwise. Unfortunately, the haters are loud, can throw a lot of money into the mix, and only care about what gets them power, wealth, false control, and whatnot.
When you practice more awareness, it can become a beacon that others see, which can help awaken awareness in them. And that’s all you and I can do for that. Every little bit helps.
Recognizing that you can’t provide awareness for another isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness (mindfulness) of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that awareness is an inside job, and you can’t give it to anyone else, you can focus on your own (self-awareness). Knowing that you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul – and that this is the truth for everyone – you can focus on practicing mindfulness, nontoxic positivity, and greater awareness to become a beacon to others.
This empowers you. When you’re empowered, that can, in turn, empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity — from the vast cylinder that exists between them — shifts life in ways that open you to more potential, possibility, and the like. From there, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you in the here and now.
The better aware you are of yourself, here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you and empower them, too. That is an amazing conduit to help reason overcome fear in the collective consciousness.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the six-hundred-thirty-ninth (639) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.
Please visit here to explore all my published fiction and non-fiction.
Follow me here!
