What is better – to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?
Paarthurnax, from The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
I don’t think I need to introduce this quote much. It’s been around for quite a while and it made its way into the online spaces. The reason I’m borrowing it here is of course the idea behind the quote. That idea is that one should consider not only the past of someone they’re dealing with but also the present actions and also how they themselves look at their past. Are they proud of their past actions? Do they look at their past decisions with a critical eye? Are they trying to atone for their past mistakes? All these questions are extremely important factors when considering a renewal of the “peace treaty of tolerance” between people and providing forgiveness in the sense of my previous episode. However, mostly in those same online space, we witness quite a lot of people viewing accountability either as a weakness or worse, a tool of abuse. How, well, let’s take a look.
Today I’m going to look back at a moment which marked a moment my path in the fandom I so loosely relate to took a turn. On one hand, the decision left me wandering in the field. At the same time it set up a safety barrier and allowed me to pursue my own goals. Were there losses? Definitely. But staying around would honestly prove horribly limiting. So yeah, today marks the one year of my decision and looking back, it was the correct one. Wondering why? Well, you know I won’t leave you in the dark.
Yup, you’re reading this right. In past weeks and months since I started writing and actually interating more with social spaces, I stumbled upon quite a few ND folks. Seeing their experiences in the open gave me a lot of insight into how they see the world, what they struggle with and how they cope. This started playing into my introspective mind (I tend to think about, question and critique my actions and thoughts a lot, sometimes to my detriment) because I began comparing and correlating my experiences and how I view and experience the world around me. And the observations are … exciting and terrifying at the same time.
Why these in particular? It’s exciting because there’s so much I relate to which makes me feel seen, heard and understood. Terrifying because the amount of experiences I can relate to is staggering and looking back at how I grew up, it fills me with … almost a crippling dread seeing how much may have been withheld from me, be it out of ignorace, lack of knowledge or negligence. The emotions and knowledge I gained recently, combined with the experiences of others are starting to raise THE question in my mind more and more loudly: “Am I neurodivergent? Was I just overlooked and never diagnosed properly because nobody knew and I never had the urge to pursuit it further?”
There are moments when I try and tap into poetry, especially when the emotions get far to strong to handle. Today is that day and I have something that can very much describe the mood.
Puzzled by the headline? I would be too on the first glance. But sit back, grab a cup of tea or coffee, maybe a treat and let’s go on the journey. I know not many will be in a mood for an attempt at philosophy, especially from some random guy with black fur, wolf muzzle and an oversized fuzzy tail but hey, if anything, consider this a bit of a weird distraction and food for thought.
Yup, you’re reading the headline right. This is the mixture of feelings I’m currently fueled by, writing these lines and sipping on my afternoon coffee. On this day, I woke up, got up and, despite it being highly unwise (I never said I’m wise and if I did … take it with a grain of salt :p), I asked myself “Will I be surprised? Or was I right all along?” So I took a peek and well, see the headline. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy. C’mon, being happy about this would make go against my own integrity. But frankly, seeing the amounts of hope felt to me as if many kind of forgot the reality of how it got into this mess. So, why am I typing all this out? Partly to vent a little bit of frustration and partly to create a form of reality check. Will it piss you off? Oh, I’m sure it will. And you’re very much in the right to feel the way. So, let’s kick you in the teeth first. Then I’ll break every single bone in your body. Then, I’ll grab the surgery tools and start putting all the broken pieces together. Slowly, patiently, making sure everything is properly aligned and in the right place.
Whoo boy, am I in a ranty mood again. Doesn’t really help given the recent climate, both natural and social. Breaking my barrier and being more aware of certain things in social space of course has me witness some unsettling thought processes and frankly, it’s tiring. It’s draining to see the insanity of people shouting loudly about who’s the next best thing. It’s infuriating to watch people being used as tools and tokens to bolster one’s self-perceived power and reach.
Been a while since I got into writing. And we’re back with the “unlucky 13”. I’ve lately stumbled upon some folks talking in public about their life struggles, ,venting their issues with other folks which caused them grief and how to apporach this. Often we get into a point where we “hold a grudge” if that trauma is massive and any reminder throws us back into the time we were experiencing the “torture”. This not only fuels our PTSD but can develop further into something worse. But when someone starts talking about forgiveness, we immediately go on full defence because we’re taught “forgiveness = everything’s fine, let’s start over”. However, that’s not true. Not at all, my dear reader. Forgiveness can in fact have a completely different form. Let me show some of them and as usual, we start with a quote; a short one and very much on point:
Pure, innocent, cherished, protected; but also painfully sincere, sometimes clumsy and savage. That’s basically kids in a nutshell. Carefree, unburdened by the social happenings, just living their lives as fully as they can. And we, the adults, look back at those times that felt simpler and joyful and we try to experience some of it while having our minds burdened by the requirements of life and doing the most to protect our little treasures and prepare them for their future.
And yet, in our goal of protecting our most precious, we often stumble horribly and even fail utterly miserably. And then we wonder why there is so much evil. Why are the little ones unhappy? Why do they rebel so much? What did we do wrong? It’s for their own good.
We all like to improve. We like to get promotions at work, getting better in games, getting better in sports … we like improvement in general and we someitmes go to great lengths to chase it. Improved tools, new trainings; all the things that make that sponge in our heads bubble with action and sometimes our muscles ache from all the gains. But is it all we should do? And how to do this in a healthy manner? How to, using the popular quote, “Check ourselves so we don’t wreck ourselves?” In today’s chapter I’m going to look on two thoughts that I keep close to myself regarding personal growth and improvement. Now, I’m not offering advice on how to grow, I’m not a life coach. My goal instead will be to look on things that could make the growth mindset actually do more harm than good and what to do to not step into that trap.