Emotional sovereignty and self-custody

Lonely. That's how I'm feeling.

Bitcoin taught me that sovereignty is learning how to tolerate the discomfort of being alone. It sounds almost obvious, y' know? No custodians, no one except you holding your keys. No institutions promising that everything is OK. Sovereign means that you have to take responsibility.

We usually talk about the attractive side of the equation. You know...freedom, independence, self-custody, verify everything...but responsibility has the less romantic side and that is: you're on your own, there's no one to call.

Sometimes you make the decision and live with it. You make a mistake, there's no customer support, the price of independence is (maybe) uncertainty. Relationships with people can expose something similar. I don't know about you guys but there's a strange temptation to outsource parts of ourselves to other people. Calm, validation, the feeling of being wanted, even the ability to enjoy a good day.

Someone becomes the person we tell everything to. A special person, the one who confirms that what happened to us mattered, the person we look when sometimes goes wrong...or right. When that person dissapears, is like...a silence feels enormus. The natural thing is to fill it. With anything: person, conversation, distraction, anything that prevent us from sitting with the uncomfortble truth: that perhaps we had outsourced more of ourselves than we thought.

We always repeat not your keys, not your coins...maybe there's an emotional version of that idea too. We, humans, are social creatures, relationships are valuable precisely because we share parts of ourselves with others but there's a tiny difference between sharing your life and outsourcing your ability to live it.

Freedom is beautifil...until responsibility arrives.

Emotional sovereignty begins when we enjoy company without needing someone else to constantly protect us from our own silence.

Just some thoughts in my sadness...

https://stacker.news/items/1550241