if there was ever anything i would like to fire out of a cannon at the entire universe with my entire soul, it's this: being alive in this world is a lot of work, and everyone's only doing their best with what they know. be kind, and try to understand, even those you don't think deserve to be understood. they're trying. don't kill, and don't be killed, alright? that's the best you can strive for.
Not everyone is doing their best.
i know it doesn't always seem like they are, especially people who seem irrational, violent, callous, who lash out at their environment and damage those around them through unhealthy coping mechanisms with seeming reckless abandon... but they are, in the ways that make sense to them, you change and learn and grow and fail and fight purely within your circumstances, and we all have our circumstances to thank for where we are now, alongside everything we believe, understand and feel. so i get angry at environments, circumstances, systems... not the people that they made.
the people who have wounded me the most in my life - sometimes very, very badly - did what they did and felt what they did because they thought it was justified from their perspective, either because they thought it was genuinely the correct thing to do (in the moment), or because they thought the collateral damage was justified. everyone does everything they do from their own internal logic and out of an unmet need going all the way down to the basics, and i genuinely, firmly believe no human is ontologically evil or intrinsically unworthy of being heard, helped, comforted, or understood.
that doesn't at all mean you need to be the one doing it, or have someone who's hurt you or the people you love in your life at all - it is so important to protect your peace, or they'll be nothing left to protect - and it doesn't make hurting others justified (which is pretty much the whole point here). you don't want to roll over and accept fate in the face of people who're hurting you or the ones you love, and this is all the furthest from passivity; it's empathy in its purest, most ferocious form, which is digging deeper. it's a lot easier to boogeyman someone as just someone who intrinsically sucks, and it's a lot less popular to see them as people with hopes and dreams and hearts and belief systems and lived experiences and neurological paths of their own. you can have the best intentions in the world and still hurt others (badly, even) in ways you're not even equipped to realize yet.
a lot of people are (completely understandably) not equipped to have ever needed to think about it like this, and that's okay too. as flowery as it's often seen, it doesn't make you very popular to want to help as many as you can, or those who hurt you, because inevitably someone will feel (completely understandably) invalidated by you empathizing with someone or something beyond the pale and see it as you not seeing *their* hurt or worldview, which couldn't be further from the truth. it's a lot of work, but i don't want anyone to hurt.
but nobody was just dropped on earth a monster, and in making sense of my own traumas and the traumas of others, and why we all do what we do in any situation - i would never trade what i've gotten from that for the world.
i hope that makes sense. it's really important to me.
l mostly believe this but I also think sometimes people make decisions they know will hurt others-decisions that they know are wrong and they do it because it's either
I know it because I've done it before. I wasn't "doing my best." I was doing what was convenient.
i think that's what your best was. it's one thing to be self-critical; i'm guilty of it terribly. i beat myself up constantly, hyperanalyze everything i've done seconds after i've done it, look back on weeks that flew past me where it feels like i didn't do anything i needed to. but what was convenient for you was what you were able to do in that moment, otherwise that's not what you would've done. maybe you were exhausted, or you were scared, or you didn't know a better way, or you had underlying conditions that made a neurotypically "easy" task more difficult, or you felt sure enough that you could handle it tomorrow to put it off until then. every night i don't get anything accomplished and go to bed early is a night i feel like shit about, but it happened for a reason you can look at and work on for a better path tomorrow... not because you just suck and weren't trying, y'know?
i have a friend - one of the gentlest people i know - who came from an emotionally starved place and still feels eaten up about a lot of anger they used to express in unhealthy ways when they were younger that they knew were undesirable but entirely normal to them... because they feel with such a heavy heart they could've done better. and even as someone still frightened by anger or loud noise myself for plenty of personal reasons, it makes me want to hold them, because that was the only way they knew how to express themselves in the moment, even if it was bad. they'd never been held! and if they have the self-awareness to want to be better, to learn how to be better, i want to see them through it, not cast them off or ostracize them endlessly so they never think there's any reason to grow. they're incredible now, and it legit makes me emotional to think about how far they've come.
it's like how heroin addicts do a lot of really crazy things under the shadow of their addictions and peers and the trappings of their support network or lack thereof. sure, they could've not taken heroin, but it seemed like a worthwhile endeavor when they did, and i'm lucky my life occurred on a path where i've never felt the same. doesn't mean i have the time or energy or resources to house them all and fix an opoid crisis on my own... but i don't feel contempt for them not doing enough, i feel contempt for the ice cold capitalism and stigma that left them there.
if i have loose change, i don't mind where it goes. if the homeless guy i give it to buys a beer with the change i'm forgetful enough about anyway... he probably could've used the beer.
sometimes you gotta have an off day. you're halfway to a better day tomorrow by knowing it. don't beat yourself up too much.
it's not something I beat myself up about- I'm not talking about the choices I made in retrospect I'm talking about choosing the easier one when I knew it wasn't the right thing to do. There's times where it was doing my best and there's times where it wasn't, and those little breaks in neurons is what makes the difference
i getcha. but since no one ever operates at 100% "i want to do this so i can do this/will actually be able to do this" at all times with everything, and you always have stressors and motivations of some sort, the times you took the "easy" route were the "justifiable" moves to you at the time, even if they didn't seem like the ideal. you were tired, hungry, unsure, unaware, stressed; those "justifiable" moves change as you grow and evolve, and i can do today what i couldn't do ten years ago when i made choices that seemed tenable but totally could've been better... but couldn't have, because i'm a different person now in a different place.
i was an absolute dumbass for not taking the plunge and starting hrt a decade ago when i wanted to and knew i had to instead of in my late 20s, and i kick myself for it all the time, but i remember what i was dealing with and what i had available to me to literally even *survive*, and i can forgive myself and understand the people who traumatized me over it (who came from very different places and artifacts of very different times, whether or not i still want them in my life) and do better for myself and the others i can reach today. that's true of a lot. there's plenty in my life i wish i could undo or redo, especially where i know it's affected others in ways i didn't fully understand at the time, but if you don't figure out down to your particles why it happened to begin with, well... that's where the growing comes from.
i just had to block someone who honestly refused to hear me. Sometimes I'm the person who has to end a relationship because I've judged that person to have not done their best, and it's better for me to get in a better position before I can be charitable to them. Sometimes though, when people are unable to hear you, I don't believe it's them doing their best
oh yeah, absolutely, i'm hella glad you took those steps for yourself. i've had to learn how to do that over the years and unlearn the basically limitless patience and agreeability and insecure co-dependent attachment styles i had to have growing up in the place i did. even if you want someone to be better, even if you really care about them when they're not hurting you, you need to protect yourself for any of this to matter, and you should never feel obligated to stay in a place where your energy is suffering and you're taking punch after punch from them and they're not willing [able, really] to hear you and not hurt you. that's not fair to you, and it's on them to self-reflect, whether you ever feel ready to let them back in or not.
i think the people who haven't heard me were doing their best circumstantially, and there's a lot of peace i've gotten from being able to look at it that way, even at its most deeply-scarring. i genuinely wish them well, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have your own peace and protect what you need to survive first and foremost, or that being pragmatic and *able* isn't important. your blood is yours. doesn't mean i don't still care about them in spite of it all, but all you can do is leave things better than you found them and try not to get killed yourself.