I don't easily get overworked with receiving mixed reactions from people who seem indecisive as I tend to frame the situation as mirroring the state of living in an uncertain world. There's a constant state of flux which influences one's perception and by extension their feelings about any given situation or person.
You can experience the same experience twice and feel differently about both of them.
Some people do need time to make a decision. Others may not be psychologically matured yet to realize what they truly want or need.
I think there's a good element of hope in keeping one's options open, specifically in interpersonal relationships, like there's something better that will come to you or you'll find if you just keep looking and remain patient.
I'm trying to differentiate between having roots firmly planted in the ground, as in values and principles based type of stability and self-knowledge, versus waiting for something better as solution of sorts to solve an internal problem via external means. Kind of like how a passionfruit plant is dependent on other more structured trees to climb and support its growth.
Put in a simpler way, it gets muddy for me on the outside to tell if someone is genuinely growing and evolving versus running away from themselves or their own unresolved issues. Not that I really have to know, but it's a different dynamic altogether from one onto the other.
I don't prefer the deception game of humans, even though life is inherently unpredictable and full of masks we all wear to varying degrees.
What does get overworked is my gut instincts, my mind will try to be stoic about the mixed reactions of people while my gut instincts will be twisting and turning like there's a fierce storm at sea. Sometimes, the experience is quite visceral and not just figurative as it's the case right now with the inspiration for writing this post.
These things are really just outside my control for the most part, so it's a waiting game of keeping tabs opened on the background while I immerse myself in other domains such as creative work, learning, and pursuing my own interests.
Multi-dimensional or multi-faceted type of living, it's quite normal actually when you understand that no single person or situation is meant to be the sole provider of meaning.
The trick is to allow these dimensions to stay separated without much trying to merge them into a perfect, seamless picture that only exists in movies, it just never works in my case, at least not according to my own timing.
To sum up, I’d say ambiguity isn’t the enemy. Over-identifying with it, however, is how uncertainty turns into self-doubt. Got to keep the internal reference point steady amidst the mixed signals.
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