#50 - My Friend’s Two Faces - The Gemini
By KC Johnson
I have a dear friend who is a true Gemini, a deeply complex person that defies simply description. I have known him since he became a fully legal adult. Through a long period of absence, we rediscovered each other’s friendship again. This will be a discussion about how complicated we all are and how we can be open to another’s diversity without judgment.
We all know people who confound us with their unpredictable behaviors. It is often infuriating to know them. We may see them as having flaws, being untrustworthy and callous with our own needs, and being self-serving and inconsiderate towards our emotions. Certainly, I am describing him here, but he has been a marvelous teacher for me as I wrestle with his personality’s idiosyncrasies.
As a Gemini, which he actively embraces, he lives a complicated life of trying to mesh his outer world, that most everyone has become comfortable experiencing, with his private life and attitudes. I am privy to many of his private life interests, but I also see that there is much he withholds even from me as his closest friend.
With one of his complex sides, he has a love for women fulfilling his straight public appearance to his family.
He has a lesser interest in gay relationships, either fleeting or more long-term. He has more deeply embraced his interest in cross-dressing of late. Perhaps he is on the slow trajectory to becoming more gay, or trans, or he is just having fun exploring his wider identities. It’s not for me to diagnose how he identifies himself as he explores his complicated life.
When we talk on the phone and make plans his Gemini comes through frustratingly clear. I have learned to distinguish between his timelines. What he says in the moment is well-intended to be true, but his spatial intention changes to another timeline after our conversation. There is little relevance to what was initially said. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” means calling me days later. When ideas are discussed with seeming concreteness, later conversations reflect very different possibilities. He has a much better memory than I have, so it’s not that he forgets so easily.
It has taken me a while to understand and accept, what are to me, his inconsistencies. This has been one of his best teaching tools for me to learn from, and it has helped me release my need to hold expectations for how others should respond around me. I have always been in a ‘truthful’ trap when someone tells me they will do something, or I commit to do something. I tend to lock their words in concrete and expect them to follow what was told to me.
When the person doesn’t follow through with their expressed intentions, I have felt betrayed. This, I discovered, is an outgrowth of my inner child complexity-needs that I have yet to fully resolve, though because of my dear friend’s personality, I have grown beyond holding against him.
Are We Our Outer World Identity Or Our Inner World Identity?
My friend is quite similar to all of us. We have complex personalities that are trying to balance our outer world persona with our inner world private identities and inner child needs. We struggle with seeming inconsistencies in our behaviors from one moment to the next. Since most of us are burdened with the need to judge so much of our life experiences, we become embroiled in emotional turmoil over the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of these experiences.
As I constantly allude to in so many of my articles, we find life confusing and challenging because we have little understanding of the needs our little inner child has in order to feel safe and accepted. By me accepting my friend for who he is, I no longer need to judge his behaviors, or be disappointed in his words. He is who he is, and I love him as a friend, regardless.
That acceptance for him extends to other areas of my life. I have a blog business partner-friend who has an extremely busy life and really can’t devote more time to our business growth needs. I accept that situation without reservation. Our business goal needs will happen when they will, and that is enough. There is no hidden angst that not enough is being done. My life needs are not on a timeline, they will happen when they will. By having few expectations that life will unfold as I want, I have become more appreciative of what comes my way.
That is not to say that I have no intention for my life direction, I definitely do. But I am thankful for the events around me and integrate them into my plans savoring the surprises. This spurs my creative process as I work to understand the new connections being made. Every twist and turn is a valuable addition to the path I am on.
We All Have A Little Gemini In Us
We try to blend our outer and inner personas with the world around us. If life’s twists and turns create distress and unhappiness, then our two personas are in a tug-of-war with each other. Often, we are trying to satisfy some deep need with our decisions and expectations. This closes us off from enjoying the capricious events we are experiencing. Most of us are perplexed about where our angst and self-doubt comes from, and we may become trapped in a cycle of confusion, anger, and a whole host of judgmental reactions to the unexpected events.
But we do have a very logical reason for our confusion. Our inner persona composed of our inner child’s reactions to experiences often needs to feel life is predictable, that experiences are within its control. Our inner child doesn’t like having to learn new ways of thinking, of changing plans it has grown comfortable with, of being surprised. It’s just like us as adults preferring predictable results to feel our safest.
We all have an inner child’s need to be loved and accepted, even in our adult life. Our inner child is really a collection of childhood eras. From infancy through adulthood each stage of those years has new needs that are the building blocks of our adulthood. These building blocks never leave us, but instead we use those earlier emotions, experiences, and developed skills as the foundation for our adult life.
The needs of our infant life to be nurtured and feel safe becomes the building blocks for our need in pre-teen years to explore our world’s wonders which become the building blocks for our teen years to become a self-assured and accepted person ready to take control of ourselves in adulthood. And throughout our adult life we rely on our childhood’s inner child need to feel safe and accepted. That childhood need to feel nurtured never leaves us. Throughout our adulthood our most basic need to feel love is our inner child crying out to be fully nurtured. That need never leaves us.
When my friend challenged my sense of certainty and reliability, he was only uncovering an aspect of my inner child need to have people around he could trust. I realized that it wasn’t my friend’s responsibility to make my little child feel safe, it was up to me to help my frightened child grow beyond holding onto his sense of feeling unsafe. As I have consciously included that fearful little child in my adult life and better appreciate his talents and compassion, I have helped him feel safer. As a result, I can embrace someone who used to seem infuriating to me and now love him for who he is with no reservations or conditions.
That Is Life’s Ultimate Message To Learn
Learning to love every moment without fear, without judgment, without conditions may be our truest life purpose. Everything else is the fluff, the minutia and significant experiences we tend to measure our self-worth by. When we emerged from the womb we were at our greatest stage of being loving. We were still connected to our loving soul life while embarking on new experiences. Every infant and child is in need of fulsome nurturing. That need for love is never outgrown. Adults merely learn ways to live around not finding that need for love fulfilled.
Once we discover how to love every moment, we learn how to give love to others, including to ourselves. This is how we heal our deepest pains. This is how we are able to release the need to judge others for not being as we want them to be. Releasing our judgments and fears allows our inner child to begin trusting us as adults. We no longer need to distrust others, we no longer doubt our place in this world, and we no longer have to live by some arbitrary timeline.
All of this is possible by reaching back into our childhood experiences, our inner child’s life, and listening to what our child has to tell us. Those things that make our inner child feel safer can still be resolved in our adult life. That’s what I did. I finally began listening to my little boy cry out to be held and loved and accepted by my adult self. Like casting off a very heavy weight, my gloom and self-doubt began fading.
My stubborn self resisted the pleadings of my little boy at first, but his truth to still need love proved more powerful than my learned adult self-defenses to hide from love. After several efforts by him, I finally heard his words, or more rightly, I felt the truth of his words. As I pulled him to me, imagined actually hugging him, telling him he was important to my adult life, and began making changes in my life to start doing some of the things he loved to do during my childhood, then, and only then, did I begin releasing my need to judge others and myself. I began to be more patient with myself and others. I began genuinely liking being myself with all of my uniquenesses.
So tonight, tell your inner child that you love him/her, hold him/her to your breast, and vow to make a place in your adult life for your inner child. Better yet, make a place for all of your childhood ages. Bring the wonder of childhood back into your life. Do this regularly, day and night. Take on the challenge of helping your inner child feel safe again. You will discover more love for every moment than you could have ever imagined. - kc
