It’s so easy to lose yourself in all the terrible events going on in the world. You start focusing on the bad and it begins to rule out all the beauty that surrounds your life. There’s an argument that if you don’t get involved then you don’t care or your insensitive to the futures history. There is a difference between being ignorant and taking care of yourself first. In any situation, whether you want to help change the world or help out a friend, your mental health and self-love comes first. What changed us from open-minded creative children to tired conforming adults?
Becoming an adult and continually throughout someone’s life there will be challenges that can easily bring a person down. When I see someone who is going through depression or is angry at life, I don’t view them as a terrible person but someone who has gone through a lot in life. I see getting sucked into this feeling of hopelessness as the easy route that really makes your life a lot harder in the long run. We think that acting sad or mad will give us attention but when we don’t receive what we expect, we fall into a darker hole, asking ourselves, “Maybe no one actually cares about me?” We can’t be thinking this way. It’s not healthy and we owe ourselves more respect than that.
These views I’m expressing comes from a book I’m reading called Love Is Letting Go Of Fear by Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD. I never thought a book would change the way I thought so drastically than this one. The book constantly reinforces the message that “the life we long for are nothing more than the limitations imposed on us by our own minds.” Just as the title says, letting go of fear allows us to love ourselves and then eventually other people. Reading this book does not instantly make you a better person. It takes lots of thought and self-reflection about what is going on in your life because you can go through reading the entire book without it affecting you. I finished reading the book and I still feel that I need to read it at least two more times until the author’s words are ingrained in me. It’s a reminder that you can be whoever you want to be.
My constant fear is that I’m going to grow out of my trust and faith in good people. Being able to see beauty in others can be a blessing but also a curse. It’s easy to be let down because people can be unpredictable, but that’s not a reason to let yourself “go” or blame others. You’re responsible for what you want your life to be. I want to always be that child who would wake up in the morning and believe that something magical is going happen. I refuse to grow to envy a child’s joy because I’ve chosen to remain unique. Stay fearless and stay you.
