“A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us. . . . It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?' . . . If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time—the stuff of life.”
― Carl Sandburg

I believe that whoever you come in contact with, romantically or friendly, is a reflection of who you are. I honestly believe that God places those people in your life for a reason. That reason is for you to work on yourself. We are the show and the outsiders are the audience. You can't see yourself and your actions unless you look in the mirror, which is them.

When we come in contact with people, we instantly look for something that we have in common with them. Finally when we find something we have in common, we like it in the beginning because it's the same, but it comes out to be the SAME destructive trait. Then we lie and deceive ourselves. We start second guessing ourselves. "Do we like them?" or "Oh , it's something about them that I just don't like." Well, you do know that the person is just a mirror image of you and YOUR flaws right?

What is different or what we are unfamiliar within ourselves terrifies us. Why? Because the other person has something that we haven't seen in ourselves or have yet to deal with. Then only to find out that they have the traits that have been distorted based on the other person's experience, when really the person's experience is a reflection of you.

2 Timothy 1:7 "For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline."

We fear what we do not know. We fear the bad things we do not wish to know. Because we are afraid and we don't fully understand our connection with the person. Do understand that God doesn't give us the trait of fear. That is man made.

We then we isolate the other person when we should of isolated ourselves. You gotta stay conscious and not unconscious. PAY attention to everyone that enters and exits your life. They are always there for a reason.

The fact that we place certain expectations on other people when we know they can't meet our needs is honestly mind boggling. We only know them through ourselves or just through experiencing life with them and that's it.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
― C.G. Jung