There are a lot of buzz words and
sayings kicking around the internet about how you should treat
yourself and treat others. We went from a society that is supposed
to respect others to demanding that respect is earned and not given.
I hear it a lot, you have to love yourself first. Which is true,
and I always have. I may not like my outward appearance but every
day I can look at myself in the mirror and see past my physical
appearance. I look myself square in the eye and know that I am an
innately good person, and I each and every day I make the active
choice to be a good person, to do no harm and live my life the way I
have chosen to be.
People who know me well know that
people tend to take advantage of me and I let them repeatedly. You
might think that this is a masochistic behaviour, but it isn't. The
way people treat me says more about them then it does about me. It
is this broken world we live in. But I will not allow it to change
the way I am. But what people don't realize is that the first time
you break my trust it is gone forever, the first time you lie to me I
won't believe a word that you say again, but you might never this is
the case because I won't treat you any differently. Why? Because I
treat others the way that I wish to be treated. I am the change I
want to see in this world.
Don't get me wrong, it isn't easy.
It's not a natural state of being, it's an active state of being. It
would be all too easy for me to take the “me first” path,
but that's not the way we are supposed to be. In order for us to
evolve as human-beings, we have to take an active roll each and
every minute of each and every day until it becomes habit. Oh I'm
far from perfect. I try hard not be schadenfreude. I try hard not
to love karma, because in actuality I really hate to see anyone
suffer regardless if they deserve it or not. It is in the little
things that is the exercise, the big things come a lot easier when
you have battled the small things.
When
you give in mentally to the little things it is like death by a
thousand cuts. Each one stings but a little and you don't really
consider what damage you are doing to yourself until you are
hemorrhaging blood from your body. It is the little things that
lead us astray. It is in these little things like treating others
the way I wish to be treated that I don't fall into the paper
shredder of life. So when people treat me poorly I don't get angry,
I feel sad and pity them because they haven't evolved as humans yet
and I hope that my actions might help them to evolve later on in
life.
It's
not enough to talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk. It ain't easy,
but the view in the mirror is priceless. Start today, the journey of
a thousand miles begins with one step.
Peace
and love my friends.
While I tend to agree with you 100% that being the change you want to see is a necessary revelation about your self being, it still makes me a little sad to see you saying that you continue to let people take advantage of you.
ReplyDeleteI don't know you personally, but I do read your blog from time to time and my own person take on that behavior (And I could be very wrong here for you personally, I am just speaking from my own experience with crappy people doing crappy things to me) is that it's more about self respect than anything else. When we allow others to treat us badly, we are treating ourselves badly. Standing up for yourself in a crap situation and asking for the basic amount of respect that a human deserves doesn't make you a bad person, or make your motives or intentions bad. It means you love yourself enough to really expect and enforce appropriate boundaries. And from what I do know by reading you day and and day out is that you deserve that - so you should take that. Not as a demand - but as a full on expectation.
just my two cents.