Only the self-sufficient person can create a shared life with others

 

Sometimes, when the night descends upon me like a thin veil of soundless shadows, I realize that in the deepest layers of the human heart lives a nearly forgotten truth — that only the self-sufficient person can create a shared life with others, because only they enter relationships not as a beggar of affection, but as a quiet spring seeking only the space in which to flow. More and more, I understand this. And more and more often, I feel how human longing — those delicate but heavy threads that pull us toward others — sometimes arises not from love but from fear. Fear of lack. Fear of that emptiness which whispers in the dark and tells us that we are not enough for ourselves.

And when a person moves from this fear, they do not love — they search for salvation. And the more they search, the deeper they sink into the layer of expectation, into that narrow terrain between yearning and disappointment, where someone else must complete them so that they do not feel the absence. There, one does not live — one waits. One does not love — one needs. One does not truly exist — one is lost.

And how painful it is to see that this is the real loneliness — not the empty room, not the absence of a gaze to meet my evening. Real loneliness is believing that only another can fill the inner void that was once the home of my own light.

Sometimes I imagine this void as a silent lake — still, black, dense. No wind touches it, no bird cuts across it with its shadow. Only I stand on its shore, listening to the absolute purity of its stillness. A part of me fears this depth, another part — strangely — finds comfort in it. Because I know that as long as I expect someone else to throw a stone into this water and set it trembling, I will circle the same orbit — hungry, unsatisfied, dependent.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, this is that old story of projection — how we place into the eyes of others what we do not want to face in ourselves. How we turn the beloved into a mirror of our own insufficiency and then suffer when they fail to be what no one could ever be. And from a spiritual perspective — this is the refusal to see that love lives within us, not as emotion, not as thrill, but as a quiet, unchanging light.

Sometimes, when I inhale deeply and close my eyes, I feel that light as warmth at the center of my chest. Alive, yet unmoving. Gentle, yet absolutely steady. And I think that perhaps this is love in its true form — exceptional and unconditional, existing for its own sake, needing nothing to be what it is.

This feeling is like a prayer. Not spoken in words, but exhaled like mist into the silence of early morning. Like those moments when even the air becomes transparent with meaning, and I — no matter how much I have resisted — find myself ready to surrender. To let myself be carried. To be myself in the barest, most unprotected version of truth.

And here I return again to self-sufficiency. Not as pride, not as isolation, not as refusal of relationship. But as the quiet, deep acceptance that a person can be a world unto themselves. Whole. Complete. And precisely because they are whole — capable of sharing space, of loving, of presence, without clinging to others like ivy to a wall.

How many times have I watched my own wounds open like old books — yellowed pages filled with words that no longer belong to me yet still weigh heavily? Each wound — an untraced desire, an unfinished conversation with the past, a fear tucked into the dim chamber of the unconscious, whispering: “You are not enough. Find someone to save you.”

Yet the truth is that salvation comes only when I turn toward that inner lake and do not flee from its reflection. When I allow the darkness to be part of me without expecting someone else to illuminate it. When I learn to walk through my own night as through sacred terrain.

And then I begin to see. Not with my eyes, but with something deeper — that inner listening that recognizes meaning within silence. I see how the love within me is not something to be earned, proven, or exchanged. It simply is. It exists like breath. Like the rhythm of the heart. Like a soft glow that never fully vanishes, even on the darkest night.

And the more I connect with this inner light, the less I expect from others. Not because I love them less, but because I see them more clearly — as separate, free, unique beings who are not responsible for finishing me. And then connection shifts. It becomes quieter. Purified. Deeper.

Perhaps this is spiritual freedom — to love not in order to receive but in order to be. To give not from lack but from fullness. To be with another not as a reflection of my needs, but as a being I choose to meet because there is space, not salvation, in that meeting.

Sometimes I wonder whether this form of love is possible at every stage of life or whether it arrives only after a certain number of losses, after a certain count of evenings spent listening to silence ring like a bell inside the chest. Maybe the maturity of love is born where one has been forced to see oneself without adornment.

And it is precisely in these moments of forced exposure — in those inner deserts where days move slowly like shadows — that I discover not only fear but immense strength. Strength to endure without collapsing. Strength to stay inside silence without filling it with illusions. Strength to face myself honestly.

The self-sufficient person is not someone who has no need of others. They are someone who has discovered that relationships are a choice, not a lifeboat. That love is a gift, not a contract. That presence is more important than possession.

And when I stand alone in the quiet of late night, sometimes I feel this with such clarity that it almost shakes me. As if an invisible door opens in my chest and through it enters something like light — soft, breathing, inexplicable.

This is the moment when I sense that God — or that nameless presence that creates and sustains us — is not outside me. That silence is prayer, that self-sufficiency is a form of reverence, that love is an inner flame.

And then everything becomes at once simple and boundless.

I become part of myself.
And part of everything.

And from this wholeness, I can love.
Quietly. Deeply.
Without expectation.
Without fear.

Simply because love is.