Not everyone will understand your journey. That’s fine. It’s not their journey to make sense of. It’s yours.
Author | Photographer | CG Artist | Filmmaker
Every lifeguard is trained to understand that the deceptive thing about drowning is that it doesn’t look like what most people imagine. The same thing often applies to depression.
Just because a person isn’t flailing their arms in the water doesn’t mean they’re not drowning. And just because a person smiles doesn’t mean they’re not battling depression.
Anger is easy. Try harder.
There are real problems and then there are the things people choose to focus on and respond to in anger because they’ve fooled themselves into believing that anger is a sign of strength. When in actuality, it’s a sign of weakness.
There is a time for anger, but rarely does it involve things that could easily be dismissed & totally forgotten if one just took a deep breath and moved on.
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The world has enough people acting badly, spewing negativity, and making life unpleasant for others – and every single one of them feels justified for doing so.
We can do better. In every single one of your encounters today – whether online or in the real world – look for ways to support & encourage people. Seek out opportunities to make others smile. And put in the effort to create memories worth having.
Remember that every person you encounter has feelings. And that sometimes the person you think might have no need for your kind words & encouragement is the one that could use them the most.
People in cults often look upon their leaders so highly that they’re willing to overlook red flags and bad behavior. All because of perpetual promises that are never met. And in the worst cases, cult followers suffer or die as a consequence.
And others think, “That would never happen to me because I’m not that gullible.”
You don’t have to be in a cult to fall victim to the influence of people who say they support you while never actually doing you any favors.
Is it possible that one of the reasons why you don’t feel as good as you could is because you’re focusing on all the things you don’t like in the world? And perhaps many of the people you’re close to and nearly all the new people in your life that you’ve bonded with are also focused on those things?
Perhaps if you focused more on the things you love and bonded with others who also love those things — even if you don’t share everything in common — you might feel better.
Because there’s still a lot to love and appreciate in the world and it’s easy to miss when you’re preoccupied with everything you don’t like. Maybe if we focused more on finding common things to appreciate it would lead to more respect & positive discourse in areas of our lives where we don’t always agree.
Just because someone doesn’t share your views doesn’t make them a bad person.
