The Pyramid of Marbles

This need to be accepted is one dimension of who we are. We also base whom we are on how we believe we related to others in our circle of acceptance. It is the father / son older sibling to younger sibling. A friend. We may have always been more successful, smarter, or whatever with our circle. One friend might be greater than us, so we find ourselves hanging out with them because the relay a feeling to us that we are comfortable, we then may also try and hold our friends in check because that is how we see ourselves in respect to others. For example, if we are always the one that does not argue, then those in your circle will then always do things which may irritate you, but you don't argue, they are used to controlling the situation when you are there. However, if you change this behavior, it threatens their position. They find themselves feeling less because you did not take your normal stance, they will then try and somehow get you back into your position of acceptance.
It's kind of like how planets have orbits because of the gravitation pull on each other. The earth travels Around the sun, the moon travels around the earth. When we launch a rocket towards space, it takes an enormous amount of effort to move out of the earth's gravitation pull.

Gravity does not want to let go, yet that is very similar to how we define our relationships, it is a gravitational pull, it is however, defined in how we define ourselves, how do our relationships make us feel. We are successful as long as we are more successful than our younger sibling; we are successful as long as we are more successful than our children.

I noticed something also when I pass people and I do it too. When I am trying to pass someone on the freeway, it seems as though they always speed up just as I get to them and it frustrates me. However, I have noticed if I choose to go past someone, if I do it with a burst of speed, they don't seem to speed up, because I am caught up and ahead before they can react, I went out of their gravitational pull before they could grab me. Runners in marathons have noticed this too, if they spend a bunch of time catching up to a person, if they don't pass with some speed, the person they are passing will gravitate to their speed and end up keeping up with them, this ends up tiring the passer out, but if they time it right, they run by quickly, before the other runner has a chance to react, then they don't gravitate to the person.

I notice also when driving, that people like to hang on, let's say you pass someone, for someone, all of a sudden, they have you in their sights, kind of like a Pluto to the sun type of relationship, they just don't want to let you out of their gravitational pull, I have noticed, that if I can break their line of sight, then they no longer keep up the increased pace and they resort to going back to the pace they were before. Have you ever noticed that, a car will be happy going whatever speed they are going until you pass them, and then they wake up and want to keep up with you? I may be alone on this, but I just like to drive without anyone being my partner.

So this entire setup is to talk about this: I feel that our relationships are like a pyramid of marbles or maybe even a jar of marbles. I believe we all have seen like what happens at the supermarket when a person pulls out the one piece of fruit and the entire display of fruit then crashes to the ground. The same is happening within families and individual relationships and how they are built, there are dependencies. The concept is that if one person decides to change the relationship, maybe go to a completely different pile of fruit, the rest are so dependant, thus they begin to do anything to keep the one that is leaving to stay, the gravitational pull. If the one leaving does not have enough energy, they can get sucked back in. The challenge here is, the others do not know what they are doing and they are willing to do almost anything to keep in their mind, their pile from crashing down like in the fruit section of the grocery store.

So the person trying to in a sense not be dependent on those relationships with the way they are set up has to be like the runner, like the car passing the other car like the rocket trying to leave the gravitational pull of the earth, like the moon trying to pull away from the earth, strong determined.

Now here is the challenge, as we try and move away from this predestined matrix of relationships, in many ways, we have now entered a place where we have never been before, we are in a sense at this moment leaving our support team behind us. No matter how much we believe in that we are doing the right thing, we have spent our entire life dependant on others choosing our life for us.

You see, we spend our lives building this relationship, the others spend their time building their relationships, and then we venture out. I remember the first time I went backpacking by myself. My friend and I drove to the trailhead, we did not know what to do at first, we were always with an adult and they seemed to always tell us what to do, here we were all of a sudden, having to make the decisions ourselves. We called my dad, we did not ask, we just called to let him know we got there, of course in record time. We had to make our own decisions and we continued throughout the trip, it was a step of independence, but inside the circle with my dad.
This concept and the understanding of how we have build our jar of relationships and how the other marbles are dependent on us and the strength they have to hold us in place and the strength we have to have to remove ourselves from the particular pyramid.