When I was 15 one of my close friends came out to me. In those days, I pretty strongly believed that being gay was wrong and antithetical to Christianity. While I believe I handled my response as best as could be expected coming from an ignorant know-it-all teenager, I know I did not make my friend feel celebrated. (Is coming out in high school any easier now than it used to be? I hope so!) I told my friend I still loved her, but did I love her if I did not trust her? (It’s somewhat amusing that I was so worried. She was not Christian herself. According to my belief system at the time, she was going to hell either way.)
In the years that followed, I started to unravel my beliefs. It took a long time. But I had these two oppositional views inside me. On the one hand, I believed God made woman and man to be partners for each other. Was it not unnatural to defy that? On the other hand, I loved my friend and loving means honoring and trusting. I wanted to trust that she knew herself.
That was not my only internal conflict. When I saw that my religion was biased against other countries and cultures, I questioned if this was something I could stand behind. When friends I loved and trusted were having sex in college, I had to question my own hard-and-fast rules against sex before marriage. Time and again, I have had to confront my previously held beliefs when someone I love contradicts them. There have been times in my life when I have had to change my beliefs in order to make them line up with who the people I love really are.
I sometimes wonder if I am too willing to change my beliefs for other people. It is as if I am going down a path, then I see someone I love off on another path. I think “I want to be with them.” Am I abandoning my own intuition?
I used to want to be right all the time. My catchphrase in high school was “I’m right. I’m always right.” It was semi-facetious, semi-serious.
Now I would prefer to be with people I love than to be right. My love of humans ranks higher than my current beliefs.
Could my belief system actually be in humanity? When I see people I love being their truest selves, I cannot deny that. I have to adjust my previously held beliefs and expectations about the world.
Who am I to say what is true for you?
Truth and love are my guides. Everything else is malleable.
One time in high school someone I did not love or trust called me judgmental. Then ALL the people I loved and trusted heard about that for years. It clearly struck a nerve. While I now know that I do not need to take criticism from people who do not know me, he kind of had a point. Since then I have tried to evaluate my thoughts about other people. I am attempting to let that part of me go. It can be a daily practice, and I have had more success in some areas of my life than others. However, in my quest to honor what is true in my own life and the lives of other humans, I have realized that my initial judgements are mostly inaccurate.
I do not think I have abandoned myself. Rather, I have learned to find a balance between “I am right” and “I am ignorant.” Somewhere in the middle is “I am searching.” I can trust myself. I trust my intuition to evaluate and know when my own path feels right and I am willing to change when another path seems like a healthy evolution.
No one can know everything, so my beliefs cannot be set in stone. I have to trust that others know themselves and their own truth.
I trust your truth, loved one.