Are you benevolent, self-sacrificial, and warm, or are you actually ghosting yourself to please others?
According to the Oxford Languages online dictionary, ghosting is the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication. We do this to others and have received the same treatment in return. What we often don’t realize is that more often than not, we tend to ghost ourselves.
Every time you prioritize someone else’s time over your own, you’re not being self-sacrificial; you’re ghosting yourself. If you don’t nurture your own goals and priorities, then when you take on someone else’s task, you’ll do it with low productivity and become bitter. This bitterness builds over time because you couldn’t say no and check your priorities.
The false religious doctrine that emphasizes the importance of being self-sacrificial is actually a way to manipulate followers into enslavement by controlling their time and admonishing them when they show signs of exhaustion. This belittles the sacrifice God made by sending His son for us. If the greatest sacrifice was already made, why do voluntary organizations, family members, colleagues, and friends still expect us to lay ourselves down in the same way?
The next time you offer yourself up for an activity, make sure you’re not abandoning yourself. If you decide to drop a friend off at the airport instead of attending your child’s sports day, you’ve ghosted yourself. If you use your meditation time to respond to WhatsApp messages from people who constantly berate you, you’ve ghosted yourself. When you answer an unofficial call during a work meeting, you’re ghosting yourself.
If you pine over people who have ghosted you and start to chase after them, you’re ghosting yourself. If someone has ghosted you, let them disappear into their haunted house. Why leave your own abundance and start knocking on the door of a haunted house?
It’s crucial to understand that it’s not always those who have dropped communication who are ghosting you. If you receive a phone call with dread, and seeing the caller ID immobilizes you, that person is likely insufferable and makes your skin crawl. If this happens constantly, that person may already be in their haunted house, built with false bravado, incompetence, and a lack of genuine friendship. They invite others over with their charm, which is like a cobweb. It glistens for a while but will be destroyed once someone decides to clean up.
Clean up your life. There are cobwebs everywhere. Some people extend a hand of assistance, but all they want is to lure you into their web of deceit. Charming on the outside, their haunted house seems full and merry, but these people are actually drunk on toxins. Flee! Do not abandon yourself for a façade.