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thisdiscontentedwinter · 6 years

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submission: To the SJW anon

After reading your lengthier post, I really wanted to respond. I’ve been there and wanted to offer some advice. (To DW: hopefully it’s okay to submit this via you! Thank you for being a place where people can discuss stuff like this.) DW is right about your viewpoint on men. You’re not wrong for feeling like that, because cheating is shitty behaviour and no one wants to be cheated on or even to face the prospect of being cheated on. Definitely not. However, it’s important to get a good perspective, to connect with reality and know that even though you feel this way and it’s definitely understandable, it’s not a universal truth, you know? I don’t know what to say to you that will help you with that. I struggle a lot with trusting men, but it helps me to remind myself there are good people out there too, that the world is more complex than just my own perception of it, and I have full control over who I hang out with. Therapy also helped a LOT. So explore your options and see what might help you. Struggling despite being good: I hear that. Oh yeah. I see two parts to what you said: 1) seeing others succeed despite being ‘bad’, and 2) struggling despite behaving in line with your principles. Regarding 1) what others do is not your problem and has no reflection on you. It’s monumentally frustrating to see other people behaving badly and not receive consequences, but the reality is that you cannot control them. They are different people who aren’t living by what you think is correct, and you aren’t seeing the full extent of their lives anyway. You don’t see the full picture - do you know for sure they aren’t suffering consequences for their actions? Famous people keep the really shitty consequences hidden, and for good reason. Their lives are theirs and not yours. How is comparing their success/lives to yours helping you? This may sound harsh, but imo you have to stop caring. Other people will always do shitty things - the world is full of asshole people doing asshole things, and there is nothing you can do to stop that. Taking on that burden of caring about it is the path to madness. It is not bad to wipe your hands of people you’ve never met and will never meet. It really isn’t. (Reminder that the world is also full of kind, wonderful people doing wonderful things, and that’s really where attention should go, if you’re going to care about what other people do.) Regarding 2) life is a struggle, and operates independently of morals and virtue. I’m still wrestling with the idea that despite my best efforts, my life isn’t perfect, and probably never will be. I’m not sure where this expectation came from, tbh, that life will somehow be better if I behave well (religion?). It got better once I outlined what I actually cared about and put efforts towards those things. I found, actually, it can help to let go of certain 'good’ ideas - if you do it, you’ll see the sky doesn’t fall in and it doesn’t actually affect that much. If that doesn’t sound helpful, maybe better advice would be to step back and understand what you can actually affect and change. It is very difficult to behave in line with your principles when everyone around you is acting differently - so be very clear on what those principles are, and where you draw lines with them. Choose what you care about and focus on those. Like DW said, you as an individual cannot change everything. You can’t change Hollywood, your country, or the world. Figure out what you can do that makes a difference that matters to you, and do that instead. When you’re doing something that makes sense to YOU, then the rewards are there and are immediate. You’re not waiting for someone to recognise what you’re doing and rewarding you for it, you’re making yourself happy by doing what you actually want and feel is right. (The prodigal son tale is a bullshit story, but a better take on it would be that if the first son actually wanted to be there with his dad doing the right thing, then he would’ve been happy the entire time because he was doing what he wanted and what he felt was right - it would have been its own reward. That’s probably a very Stoic take on it though lol). I will also say that a lot of the discourse around inequality and injustice that I see online is American-centric. You said you’re from another country. I am not American either and certain nuances bug the hell out of me - just because things are a certain way in the USA doesn’t mean it’s exactly the same in other places. To give a deliberately vague example: racism is a universal concept and reality, but it manifests differently in other countries. Certain things have happened in the US that haven’t happened in other places (and certain things have happened in other countries that don’t happen in the US), so I sometimes find it irritating when Americans word things as though their experiences of certain issues like racism are universally true and apply all around the world. I’m not trying to diminish their issues at all - there’s a lot of shit going on and it needs to be addressed and discussed. (By them.) It’s important to recognise what concepts and issues are actually relevant and helpful to you and your life. Judging your country by American standards and inequality discourse just may not be that helpful in some situations. I don’t know if that’s what you’ve been doing, or if that’s your situation, but I wanted to make that point just in case. You sound like an intelligent and considerate person. Like DW said, you also sound like you have compassion overload. It’s very true that you can’t take care of other people and other things if you don’t look after yourself. No one is perfect. There are great people who have done extraordinary things for humanity, yet have been horrible in other parts of their lives - especially when viewed through the lens of time. Does that outweigh the benefits they’ve brought? It’s up to you to decide. No one can ever be perfect - and that includes you. It’s okay if you fuck up sometimes, because we all do. Sometimes we don’t act in line with our principles because life just doesn’t allow it. Shit happens. Priorities shift and change. What’s considered morally right nowadays will be different in twenty years’ time. It’s up to you to do decide what’s important to you. Don’t let others make that decision for you. My advice (like you haven’t had enough unsolicited advice in this post, right?!?!) is to step back and process things. Connect with yourself and maybe try therapy. Figure out what works for you and keep that in mind as you use the internet and go through your day. Being compassionate with yourself is paramount - and it’s not bad or selfish to put yourself first, it’s essential in this online environment. Putting yourself first also =/= being an uncaring asshole. Far from it. You can care about yourself

and

others. Balance is key to everything.

DW: Thank you for your perspective!

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