On Making Friends And Alienating People
June 5th
“I used to care what people thought about me… Until I tried to pay my bills with their opinions”
Here is the deal: Quite simply put, in life, some people are going to f*ck with you, and some people are not. On a scale of needing the latest phone or backpack when you are in high school to ensure that you are at the right coolness level (VERY IMPORTANT), to drinking expensive wine from the South of France when you are on a raging college night bender ( NOT IMPORTANT; $5 migraine inducing vodka will do quite nicely), the older you get, the more you start to tip towards the end of the scale. We go through all the awkward life phases, deal with our issues with trying to fit in, trying to please others, trying to be “in”, whatever “in” may signify to you and trying to live your life by how other people have defined what should and should not matter. The more confident and self assured you get, the more you begin to stick to your tribe and trim all the excess fat in your life, surround yourself with people who share a similar vibe and honestly start to accept yourself for who you are — the better life becomes.
Let people love you the way you are: every good, nice, sweet, lovely part of you and every dark, complicated, messy flaw of yours.
Let us face the reality: Unless you are an Ogre, you must learn how to blend in: social graces and good manners demand that we must learn how to deal with other people, how to interact within the confines of society, learn what is acceptable, and what is approaching the limits of unacceptable. This makes sense; as much as we may want to, we can’t walk around doing whatever we want, saying whatever we like and letting the consequences be damned (disclaimer: except you are Donald Trump, a Trump follower, work at Fox news, or you are an old African relative — they give no type of fucks I’ll tell you that). There are consequences for every action no matter how well meaning. When you put forward an action, we must always be prepared for a reaction, and more importantly understand that the reaction may not always be what we may want or expect.
While we must respect the walls of social etiquette, I believe there is room in life to “just be yourself”. I believe that after a certain age, you learn to stop giving a damn about the opinions and you navigate life as best you can while being as true to your person as you can be. We must learn not to bend or break trying to fit in. There is always a tribe out there for you. Do not hide the parts of yourself that make others uncomfortable; the broken jagged pieces that make up the less than perfect picture; someone out there is capable of loving you just the way you are. It does not matter if you have not yet had great accomplishments or you sometimes may feel or look less than your best; life may be a stage but you do not have to put on a show for anyone.
It is much easier to edit oneself; Take the video roll and cut out the bits that may cause one to cringe, slap on a pretty filter, lower the volume, paint a pretty picture, live so others around you are always perfectly comfortable because you do not make them have to sit through hours of the raw footage. But in your raw footage is where the most beautiful parts of you may lie.
Many people are not going to agree with you. Many people are not going to like you. Many will dishonor and disrespect you. That is okay.
Many other people will love you — just the way you are. And most important, it is only then you will truly learn to love yourself.
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This is day 5 of my 30 day writing project. Please click on my stories if you would like to check out some of my other entries.
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Some other stories by me:
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