Summary
Survival is a badge you earn but that doesn't mean you can use it to judge others as weak. Surviving is a choice. It's not a default setting. Your reality is not everyone's reality.
#FirstCoffeeThoughts
Lately I’ve seen messages on social media that, in some way, shape of form, advocate for people to suffer. I have seen 5 over the past couple of weeks and 2 were from therapists …
Do you want to know what was the same about all of these different messages? They were all from Black people. All of the Black people posted different messaging with the same theme … that suffering is necessary and that people need to learn to cope better.
One therapist suggested that protecting your peace meant that you were weak.
Another said that not everyone needs therapy, they only need better resilience.
Another person said that people need to stop considering oppression as anything other than an average Tuesday.
One therapist suggested that protecting your peace meant that you were weak.
And yet another person more or less said that naming things as mental illness that were actually just “daily life” was making people weaker and causing a mental health crisis.
This messaging all sounds really familiar …
It sounds like: 𝙄 𝙨𝙪𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙄 𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙣𝙚𝙙 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙚.
One of the most selfish, out of touch, delusional, and utterly untrue sentences to ever be uttered by people who are fundamentally damaged and don’t even realize it.
A clear indicator of a problem sentence like that is the fact that it has “I” in it … twice.
It’s all about you. It doesn’t take into account any reality other than your own and, in fact, it assumes that everyone’s reality is the same as yours.
That’s so absolutely wrong.
You cannot dictate how you think OTHER PEOPLE SHOULD FEEL about THEIR OWN lives.
You cannot say that how OTHER PEOPLE RESPOND to life and that how THEY FEEL ABOUT THEIR lives is something that shouldn’t be taken seriously.
You cannot say that OTHER PEOPLE ARE WEAK just because you may be “strong”.
You cannot say OTHER PEOPLE NEED TO COPE BETTER simply because you have learned how to compartmentalize and live in a delusional space where you don’t ever deal with the truth of your problems.
Trauma to a Black person who grew up in a violent, oppressive, colonized household is not going to be the same in a white person who grew up with an alcoholic parent but still with tons of privilege.
Oppression to a member of the Global Majority may be “a Tuesday” but that doesn’t make it less serious and doesn’t mean it doesn’t cause emotional, mental, and even physical damage to them and others.
Survival is a badge you earn but that doesn’t mean you can use it to judge others as weak.
𝙀𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙙𝙞𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙩.
Everyone has different minds and different bodies.
Every reality is experienced uniquely by the people within it.
Survival is a badge you earn but that doesn’t mean you can use it to judge others as weak.
It’s easy to sit back and say “Well I could have survived what that person is complaining about …” and that might be true but you are NOT THEM. You are you. You do not have their body or their mind.
You cannot say how you would have reacted if YOU WERE THEM and NOT YOURSELF because you cannot know anything about that person beyond assumptions.
You know how white men always have the audacity to think they can do better than any woman doing something even if she is a professional athlete?
It’s a similar when you say “I could deal with that better. I could survive that easily. I wouldn’t complain about that.” etc
Is that really true?
What if you were born with a chronic illness? What if you were born disabled? What if you were a woman with PCOS? What if you were born in a different country?
What if you were THEM and not YOU?
I have written many essays about this topic and the bottom line to everything is: 𝙈𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙛𝙪𝙘𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙗𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨.
The flapping of a butterfly’s wings could have been the only difference between you “surviving” something and not.
I put surviving in quotes because judging others for not being you and advocating for people to suffer to become strong indicates mental dysfunction and having so little empathy and compassion for other people indicates something even worse.
𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧.
Your life, your experiences, and your “survival” are not the standard by which everything should be judged and determined.
Your delusion, selfishness, and oppressive judgement upon everyone who is not you is mental dysregulation, it is NOT survival.
Your body is not everyone’s body.
Your health is not everyone’s health.
Your gender is not everyone’s gender.
Your oppression is not everyone’s oppression.
Your privilege is not everyone’s privilege.
𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙞𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙤𝙣𝙚’𝙨 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮.
Your delusion, selfishness, and oppressive judgement upon everyone who is not you is mental dysregulation, 𝙞𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙫𝙞𝙫𝙖𝙡.
Surviving your own life is not a pulpit from which you should be spouting nonsense about how people need to stop complaining about “every little thing” and learn to “find strength in oppression” and learn to “be strong and not weak” and be able to “survive difficult days”.
How people cope and survive or don’t is NONE of your business unless you plan to HELP them through their own reality using your own strength.
But I know very FEW people who are capable or willing to do that for others.
I share my struggles, my journey, and my wisdom because I believe sharing our stories is how we learn about and from each other.
I don’t share because I think that everyone should do what I do. I’m positive most people cannot.
It takes a TON of support and a TON of time and privilege to be able to dedicate the majority of your life ONLY to bettering yourself.
I had to 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙣 𝙢𝙮 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙪𝙡𝙤𝙪𝙨𝙡𝙮 from 1990 onward to get here.
No one is me.
No one is you.
Learn from others but 𝘿𝙊 𝙔𝙊𝙐.
Surviving is a choice. It’s not a default setting.
These people on social media calling people weak and calling for suffering to be a teacher and suggesting that resilience is something everyone is capable of at the same rate and in the same way are not only fools, they are dangerously selfish and out of touch with reality.
Because most of the people I’ve seen doing it are Black, I feel more sorry for their dysregulation and I feel safe in assuming the lives they have experienced to become this way.
Simply: 𝙊𝙥𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙗𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙨 𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩.
I can tell you with absolute certainty the 2 primary things that lead to me surviving my childhood and becoming the person I am.
It’s only 2 things and 1 was a person.
If that person didn’t exist and 1 particular event didn’t happen, I can’t say that I would be here now if everything else in my life had played out in the exact same way.
2 flaps of a butterfly’s wings …
You have no idea what you OR your reality would be under vastly different circumstances, so mind your own damn business.
Surviving is a choice.
It’s not a default setting.
Surviving is an act of will.
Surviving is a decision.
It’s sometimes a complicated decision with an even more complicated set of circumstances, trials, luck, and variances.
I have NO patience for people who hate on those who experience luck and opportunity or benefit from privilege, or variance.
I also have NO patience for people who believe everything they have achieved is solely because of hard work and nothing to do with luck, privilege, or variance.
Some people who want desperately to survive don’t and some who really don’t do.
Your individual survival is not a guideline, a goalpost, an instruction manual, or a guarantee for anyone else’s.
People’s lives, bodies, minds, and realities are their own.
So please just STFU.
