Choose wisely the five people we are with the most

I read yesterday the five people we spend the most time with are who we become so we need to choose those five carefully and wisely. That message stayed with me for the day forcing me to reflect on what it really means to me. And the more I reflected on it. the more I realized that sometimes we choose the five people that we are closet with and other times we choose who to release. Who to let go in order to make way for the five that will enable us to grow and to change. To experience and learn the lessons we asked to learn.

I also realized those five include the people in our homes. The ones we have chosen to be with including our spouses and our children. They become our equalizers because we cannot hide who we are from them as they are in our space every single day. They help to mold us as we do them. They ground us as we do them. We watch each other and become each other without realizing it. We love each other some days and hate each other the next. Recognizing there is a thin line between love and hate.

Our closet relationships are a reflection of where we are in our lives. Those that remain constant are the greatest teachers we could ask for because they weather every storm with us. Create every storm within us. They are our balance. Our yin and yang. The greatest mirror we can ever hold up to reflect ourselves. Because they are us as we are them. Mingling. Mixing. Sometimes up and sometimes down.

Those in our homes are our constants and then the rest come and go. Some that only remain for short periods of our lives. They come to help us to understand something about ourselves. That something that we can’t see ourselves until it is reflected back to us. Magnified for us. Those that irritate us the most are the ones who can help us the most when we cast aside ego and pride. Because they come to challenge us to dig deep. To go beyond the superficial to find our reality. Our point of fulcrum.

Sometimes the relationships we believe are meant to last forever end without us understanding how we got to that point until we step away and realize it was for our best and for the best of the relationship we had to end. The longer we are in intimate relationships the more we learn about our inner most selves, those needs and desires and lessons we have suppressed even from ourselves come to the surface. Bringing us face to face with who we are and who we are not. What we can tolerate and what we cannot.

So it is very true we need to be very careful about who we bring into our intimate circle because they become the basis of who we are as we become them and they become us. Because we are them as they are us. Mirrors reflecting the best and worst of who we are. 

Today is the birthday of my greatest teacher and challenge, my husband Nick. Sometimes we are up and sometimes we are down but most of all we have been brought together to grow, to stretch, to yield and to compromise as well as to learn how to love from a place of vulnerability and surrender. Happy Birthday to my rollercoaster ride husband with love and light and surrender.