The Liberating Beauty “F… It”

Listen, smile, agree and then do whatever the fuck you were gonna do anyway.

Robert Downey Jr.

As I have grown older, and hopefully wiser, I have taken up the task of self-reflection and social observation. As I do this, I am left with a rather interesting thought; I find that I am proving myself to other less and less. What I am not sure about is the “Why.” It could be that I make less mistakes, that I am more considerate of others, or that I hold myself more accountable over my actions. Or it could be that I really stopped giving a f@ck what most people think about me.

I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

You will find that in your life you feel obligated to prove your opinions to plenty of people around you, some who aren’t even important in your life. Just look at any thread within social media, as people will go virulent on anyone who thinks differently. Other times you find yourself constantly trying to prove your worth to those closest to you, trying to make them see all that you are willing to do and be in an attempt to receive their approval. The main problem with these actions is that the very person you seek to impress has no intention to see your worth.

You may find yourself in the receiving end of others willing to belittle you; make you feel less than worthy just because they are miserable within their own lives. If they are miserable, EVERYONE has to be miserable.

Others are so convinced that their own way of looking at things is the only way to look at things. They hold their opinions as the only valid truths and try to shove them down the throats of everyone else. Anyone with a different opinion is simply wrong within their eyes.

Still other times, people will make you out to be a bad person simply so they don’t feel guilty about the things they did to you. It’s a lot easier to blame your actions on someone by assuming they deserve it. God forbid they should take responsibility for their own actions.

So, when I take all of these possibilities into account, I have come to the conclusion that people need to be responsible for themselves, and that includes the ignoring all the naysayers and critics. You’re not here to please others but rather to better yourself. If by bettering yourself others are please, great. If not…

Sometimes f@ck it is a perfectly acceptable response.

Rejection, The Online Dating Edition or "What The Hell’s Wrong With Guys Today?"

Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don't base your self-esteem on their opinions.

Harvey Mackay

A couple of days ago, a post was forwarded to me by a female friend asking for my opinion. The  basic idea of the post? As the article opening statement clearly mentions: “Man gives attention to a woman. Woman expresses her lack of desire for said attention. Man immediately turns hostile.” To read the full article, click here. My friend’s question was pretty simple.

What the hell’s wrong with guys today?

In actuality, her comments were a little more complex and involve several phrases that would shame most experienced seamen, but that’s neither here nor there. To be honest, I can’t really blame her comments as I have noticed how common this behavior is in the online dating circuit. It’s common enough to merit the Internet’s attention by exposing this behavior in previous articles like this one and this one. After looking this, and plenty more information about the subject I ended up with just one question in mind.

What the hell’s wrong with guys today?

Sure, we could blame a patriarchal society, male entitlement, and sexism. Everyone else seems to do it. But to be honest, every time people place blame on such abstract concept, it’s usually so they don’t have to think about an issue and find a more tangible cause and solution, it’s little more than a cop out.

So I started thinking about it, why can’t any of these guys (note that I will neither use the term men nor gentlemen when speaking about these guys) take the hint that the lady in question isn’t interested, nor why can’t they accept a simple “No.” What’s the emotional and social baggage that makes them incapable of dealing with rejection? And that’s when it hit me. The key word to find an answer isn’t “men,” or “sexism;” it’s “rejection.”

Please keep in mind as we move forward that I’m not saying that these guys aren’t sexist. What I’m saying is that they turn hostile (hurt) due to a rejection. They probably would have shown their sexist colors anyway later on. Also this isn’t your typical man, as most men aren’t like this. Unfortunately, today’s social media lives by feeding you with the worst case as if it was the typical case. We eat it up, share it out, and relate to it because who can’t relate with the idea of dealing with that one asshole who ruined your entire day?

But back to the topic in hand, why do these guys act this way? Because we trained them this way! Just take a second, stop thinking about the actual event and think about what we have been taught about dealing with rejection. They usually come in two varieties.

“Never take ‘No’ for an answer. Rejection just means you need to try harder.”

or

“It’s not that you’re not good enough. It’s that the other person failed to see what you had to offer”

These might sound like wonderful and inspiring life messages until you think about their effect on a person’s behavior. The first one teaches you that ‘No’ is unacceptable and that whenever you get that answer, you just need to try harder and more aggressively to achieve your success. Nice lesson to learn is a society where consent is so important whenever you are interacting with anyone. The second one teaches you to blame everything on everyone around you and their rejection is viewed as an attack based on the other person’s issues. Then we wonder where our current attitude of entitlement comes from.

We have these lessons drilled into our minds since we are kids. How many times have we heard a Mom tell her young boy that he’s special, and if the other kids don’t want to play with him, it’s their loss? (while glad that her wonderful son is no longer dating that tramp) How many times have we heard a Dad tell his daughter that she’s too good for the boy who dumped her? (while secretly planning the jerk’s demise)

But why do we see this behavior typically from guys? It’s not that women don’t have their fair share of assholes. It’s that in our current social behavior it’s the man who usually does the opening move. Due to this, the numeric probability is that you will see more male assholes than female assholes, at least in this specific scenario. It’s not that women don’t do the same, as there are plenty of stories of gals questioning a man’s masculinity as soon as he rejects her.

So how do we keep this from happening, or at the very least lessen the probabilities of this happening? We could start teaching our kids to deal with rejection from a positive perspective. We need to stop teaching how to handle hearing the word ‘No’ in a way that the person doesn’t feel insulted. We need to stop measuring our self-worth based on other people’s approval.

What if you’re not a failure after all?

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Thomas Merton

Before you continue with your usual rounds around social media today, I want you to take a moment and look for the following; how many articles pop up telling you what you are doing wrong? How many articles are simply about letting you know how messed up you are and how you should live your life? How many are about guilting you about how broken you are? The funny thing is that at the end, most are written by people or posted on sites who make money every time you feel like you are failing at life?

What if I told you that you aren’t failing, but rather you have been taught to think you are a failure? What if I told you to consider how you have actually succeeded to survive every single one of the worse days in your life, and you are still here! THAT is far from failing.

I want to take this week to focus on breaking free from the social programing you are constantly being force fed and making you realize just how much you already have going for yourself. And the first thing we need to understand is that thinking you are a failure isn’t an accident, but an open strategy that is constantly forced on you by people who want to benefit from your insecurity.

Sure, you are far from perfect. We all are. And there will be times where you DO need help dealing with those imperfections and personal challenges. But as soon as you are told that EVERYTHING you are doing is wrong, you have to wonder and question what are the intentions of the person making you feel like that. Do they want to help you?

Or do those people want you as miserable as they are? Do they want you weaker than them? Do they want to exploit you? Helping you is often the least they want to do. You can only help someone by building on the positive, by raising the person up. When you focus on the negative, you simply bury that person even further. Last time I checked, kicking someone who’s down is no way of helping them.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t own up to what you have done; quite the contrary. I am saying that the only way to take accountability for the bad you have done is by doing good. It’s not about letting someone know you feel guilty, but proving to them how you are making up for it. Focus on the good you can do, instead of the bad you have done. At that point you will realize if the person even wants you to make up for your mistakes, or they simply want to make you suffer.

Take a second and look at the good you have done; and go out to do more of it. Take a second and look at the good people you have around; and go find more people like that. Surround yourself with things that elevate you. Surround yourself with the good you want in your life. When you do this, you will notice how the good in your life starts to outnumber the bad.

Wake Up

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

Frank Herbert

As we live through this world, we often find ourselves merely existing. Sure, we continue comfortably, not because things are going well, but because we have grown comfortable with our discomforts. Like that nagging back pain that will never go away or those shoes that are too tight, we have learned to adjust how we live to lessen the discomfort to a point that’s tolerable. And then we dismiss it as part of what it means to exist.

We see it in our everyday routine, repeated time and time again enough to a point that you no longer need any actually active brain cells to continue with your life. We see it in a dysfunctional relationship where the only communication is either discussion on how to pay bills or arguments over what pisses each other this time. We see it in a life where you simply forgot to even give up on life as you dull your soul out with poison; be it alcohol, drugs, or something as simple as lot of TV time.

But if you are lucky, if you are truly blessed, you will receive a wakeup call, a moment when merely existing is no longer acceptable. Maybe it was a medical crisis. Maybe it was a marital crisis. Maybe it was a financial crisis. Or maybe it was simply realizing that you could no longer look at yourself in the mirror as you lost who you were.

When I said that you are fortunate for having woken up by hitting bottom, I wasn’t being sarcastic. Some people hit bottom, and even then won’t wake up. You realized that you needed to change, grow, and better yourself. You understood that you couldn’t take another day as the man you were. That alone is commendable but don’t expect any celebratory parade as too often men wake up simply to change position and go right back to sleep.

Not this time. Not today.

Today you dust yourself off and you stretch yourself out, because the road ahead isn’t an easy own. It will force you to become accountable for every wrong choice you’ve done and to stop blaming yourself for everything you have no control over. You will unburden yourself of what’s not needed and carry a new load of all that you need in your new journey. Brothers, awaken and walk down your path. At the end, what changes isn’t simply your life, but the fact that now you are alive.