We have the responsibility to make sure we’re habitable before we expect someone else to take make a home within us.
How homey are you really?
Imagine you’re looking to buy your dream house, with all the rooms and interior design that you desire. Say you buy that house still lovely outside, with a trimmed lawn, and blooming flowers in the garden. Inside though, the walls are unpainted, the flooring is filthy, and the ceiling is falling through.
Would you move in straight away, set your furniture up, paint over the un-plastered walls? Would you move your family in with mould on the walls and dust and cobwebs on every corner? Probably not, it would be outright dangerous and unwise. Any house with a weak structure, regardless of the beautiful exterior, will eventually collapse.
So why do we let people move into us when we’re not habitable yet?
Don’t let someone else come and tell you that your emotions need a plumber before you’re even aware of your own blockage.
Nicole Moyo
Perhaps we let people move in, sometimes for years at a time, hoping they mend our wounds and paint the tears away. Expectations based on fictional ideals lead us to us think they’re the joiner that’s supposed to repair the banister and fix the floorboard of our soul. We think they’re supposed to seal the walls and cover the cracks from our childhood and relationship traumas.
Consider this: a home is where a person is nurtured and restored; if the home is a mess, whoever lives in it will struggle to thrive. On that basis, we know that as someone’s home, we cannot expect them to be the best they can be if we are a trash environment for them to thrive in.
Maybe we don’t know that we’re inhabitable. That’s understandable, initially, but constantly pleading ignorance will get tiring. It’s tiring for those surrounding us, but also for ourselves. At what point do we face ourselves in the mirror and strip ourselves bare? When was the last time you took stock of your emotions and really looked at your values, behaviour, and habits? Even more detrimental, is the ‘it’s just how I am, take it or leave it’ attitude we adopt in defence of ourselves when others point out our flaws. Sadly, we’re in an age that makes it easy to maintain our stubbornness – a few clicks and we can find a quote that condones our faulty thinking. Conversely, though, it’s just as easy to find a quote that will send you down the opposite route. Be warned though, a good look at yourself will leave you feeling a little exposed – you won’t like it, certainly not in the moment.
Hear me when I say, I’m not advocating for perfection, nor am I suggesting that we need to be perfect in order to be worthy of being loved and cared for by others. What I am saying is that we are all susceptible to unhealthy habits and thinking patterns adopted from the environment and people surrounding us (who are also susceptible). We are naturally more inclined to defend these than to challenge them, even when they do not serve us, and hurt those closest to us. Not only do we owe it our loved ones to show up as our best, but we also owe it to ourselves so that we are not led into destructive patterns that may fill us with regret and (unrecognised) self-loathing.
Start to renovate yourself. Don’t let someone else come and tell you that your emotions need a plumber before you’re even aware of your own blockage. DIY leaves no room to blame anyone else for a shoddy job.
How many will you let live in you before you collapse?
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