Soulshine

“We’re tapped because of a universal human expectation that the world will treat us fairly. This is a cherished, childish assumption—‘If I’m good, the world will be good to me.’ We should know better.” Phil Stutz & Barry Michels, The Tools Granted, like Jimmy Seymour in Broadway Serenade , many of us mess-up our relationships because our self-love and self-esteem are poor. But many of us also mess-up relationships because we have an age-old bad belief stored in our subconscious minds. And that belief is that life should be fair. The belief that life (and thus relationships) should be fair is as irrational as an old belief that plague me for years: Everyone should like me. Both of these beliefs produce expectations that only serve to make our lives miserable. For many years I agonized whenever someone obviously didn’t like me. It left me feeling like a failure as a person. The belief that I should be liked by everyone kept me on constant guard. It meant everyt...

Let’s look a little deeper into the character of Jimmy Seymour from the film Broadway Serenade . Once Jimmy realizes that he never lost Mary Hale, his many attempts at self-sabotage unfold before his eyes. Jimmy is able to see clearly for the first time that it wasn’t Mary who had stopped loving him. It was Jimmy. He had stopped loving himself many years ago; he had abandoned himself, lost himself. He then acted-out in ways that forced Mary and others to abandon him as well. Jimmy had accused Mary of being unfaithful to him, when deep down he really knew that she was true to him. The real problem was that Jimmy was never true to Jimmy. And as a result, Jimmy was filled with self-loathing and many personal insecurities about himself. He couldn’t trust in Jimmy and so he couldn’t trust in Mary or anyone else. He was overly critical of himself and this had made him into a very angry young man. His anger then spilled over onto Mary and others, alienating them further from Jimmy. ...