Why Do We Run From the Ones Who Stir Our Souls?
Four o'clock in the morning. I just returned home from a long night shift, leaving behind a place filled with the constant hum of machinery, cold lights, and the bustle of hundreds of people moving untiredly. When you step out of that chaos where you talked, greeted others, shared impressions, and challenged your mind to ensure every detail of your work was properly closed, it is impossible to fall asleep in the first five minutes. The brain needs a bridge to cross from the noise outside to the quiet inside.
To find my rhythm and detach from the harsh reality of work, I have a small relaxation ritual: I take refuge in a movie. Early this morning, I stumbled upon a simple romantic story on YouTube, but one of unexpected depth that took me on an inner journey so intense that it left me speechless, with clean tears on my face. Watching the screen in the dim light of the room while the whole world was sleeping, I began to think about the bizarre paradox of how we, as humans, choose to love and protect ourselves.
The movie brought me face to face with a painful truth: when a person doesn't move us at all, when there is no chemistry, we push them away with cold indifference. We don't care what they think, nor do we care how they perceive the fact that we set them aside. Yet, when we meet someone who makes us tremble, someone into whose eyes we are afraid to look because they mirror our entire vulnerability, we react completely the opposite way. We build the highest walls. We offer the very person who attracts us the most our harshest shield of rejection.
It is a strange self-defense mechanism. It's like finding a million dollars on the ground: rationally, you know that treasure could change your life, that you could buy a yacht, a house, and put yourself securely on your own feet. And yet, when it comes to a rare soulful connection, we freeze. We hide behind a masked rejection precisely because we are terrified of losing control, of getting hurt, or breaking our own little world of solitude where we have learned to survive.
Sometimes, we need a story watched at four in the morning to remind us that, beneath all the armor we wear every day at work or in society, we remain souls craving truth. The tears allowed to flow in the quiet of the room are not a weakness, but proof that our shields can fall and that behind them, a heart capable of feeling deeply is still beating.
How do you disconnect after an exhausting day or shift at work? Do you have a ritual before sleep, or can you fall asleep as soon as you get home?
And most importantly: have you ever felt that you build the toughest shield precisely in front of the person who attracts you the most? How do you view this rejection born out of fear?