Stop The Epidemic
People are unkind to themselves. They are unkind to life, they are unkind to love and most of all they are unkind to each other. Mull over how one can you be kind to someone else when one cannot be kind to themselves?
Our environment is to blame. Children come to me feeling invisible because they do not measure up to what their parents expect from them. If it's not the parents, it's the schools that put the child down for being too active or too inactive. Children are constantly bombarded with negative information about their behaviour, attitude, aptitude and capabilities.
Yesterday, a girl who was untouched and confident, someone capable of standing on the stage reciting soliloquies, today trembles at the idea of being on stage. Why the shift?
Ask her and she says that she has lost her confidence.
I hate to break it to you but this is not lost but stolen confidence. It has been stolen, after tragically destroying her belief in herself. This shatters her innocent innate nature of securing love and happiness through self-experience and expression and makes her develop a series of self-doubts.
What happens from here on is the epidemic, the series of unauthentic behaviours to check responses from others. A lost sense of self-based on other people's reactions. Here one loses complete understanding of who they are because their idea about themselves is based on how people think they are.
We are so busy trying to find approval from our friends and relatives and society at large that we forget who we really are.
The distorted belief implies that if we are just a sum total of the other's judgement about us, they aren't we also entitled to judge others?
At my healing space, I come across this the theme of judgement very often.
Things like "I'm not good enough, I can't financially sustain myself", or "I am a loser, my sister has a marriage with a kid, and I don't have any direction" or "I can't stand my boss, he is sinister" or "My wife is a real burden, she can't support me with anything", "Wow, if you think you're calm then you need help" "I'm a terrible mother, I work and can't spend time with the kids" etc. These are all judgements about ourselves and others. Judgment crowds your brain and intellect, leaving you with little space to allow freedom and joy of living to come through.
Every time you comment on something negatively remember you are holding judgement to your own self. You can only be kind to others if you are kind to yourself. Stop being so harsh to your own self by being so critical of others. You won't even be able to recognise it because it's become such a part of us. We all know we are bound to fail at so many things as we go about our lives. It's not the loss of status or income that really bothers anyone when they are failing. It's more the ridicule and judgment of others that kill us.
That fear is our judgment, precisely what we want to get rid off to live freely.
Unfortunately, we are surrounded by opinions of what is right and wrong constantly. Classic cases are our newspapers and tabloids we read in the morning which tells us how everyone is doing the wrong thing, how the people who govern us don't know how to do it right. No wonder I am happier not reading the newspapers which tries hard to keep our moral compass high on judging how others are running their lives.
The idea or notion of successful lives is not our own but borrowed from others. We imbibe from our parents and then from what we see around us via marketing, advertising, television, friends, colleagues etc. Trying to make sure what is 'you' amidst all this is hard. Not getting what you want is bad enough but what can be worse is having an idea of what you want based on others expectations, at the end turns out that you didn't want any of that all along is something that you wouldn't want to go through. Which means try listening to your own self and just drop that judgment on how things should be.
This way of life is unhealthy. These thoughts are not healthy for you or for anyone else. Your attitude is more viral than Ebola!
What is more detrimental is that this virus is one that people are happy living with as long as it hasn't caused a severe breakdown because one is unaware of the long-term emotional, behavioural and physical repercussions of this consistent behaviour.
Judgement about therapy
The only way to retrain the brain is to work with a therapist who can help you understand the folly of thought by reprograming the neuropathways that have been adopted through continuous conditioning.
?The stigma of therapy prevents folks from undertaking it and without which it is difficult to change patterns and a transformation is only possible with therapy. This takes time. Therapy which brings you back to yourself, back to your uniqueness is not an easy task because even as clients come in, they are still in the mould of presenting themselves with their masks. They want the therapist to first 'like' them. We break through the layers of artificial self-beliefs and constructs, bringing them closer to the inner wisdom with which they were born.
Let's stop the epidemic. Let's stop seeking to change others, sizing others up, dismissing those around you and most of all, stop judging yourself.
Here is the poem I carved out on the judgement which you might drive home the point.
Blind man reading in the dark
Why do we say mankind, when people aren't that kind?
Although we are all struggling, most in a bind
Yet we judge another, "a whore, a slut, a loser, a fool"
Baseless assumptions make their narrative cruel.
Yes, he's a fool
But he lives by his rules.
Yes, she's a whore
But who are you to keep a score?
Yes, he may be a loser
But, don't judge a book by the cover
Yes, she may be a slut
But, how many times were her wrists were cut?
You walk into someone's life, without a preamble or a past
Yet you judge their story, like a blind man reading in the dark.
We're all hurting but moving ahead
Be compassionate, there have been tears shed
There is a history of lessons intrinsically woven with pain
There's suffering beyond a doubt through which one gains
Perspective, intimacy, humanity and love
Treat the people you see with feathered gloves.
Broken people who survive are the beautiful ones
They are the heroes who're stories are unsung
Love is the underlying theme
To have, to lose, to want, to dream
Give the whore, the slut, the loser and the fool
Love beyond your pre-established rules.
Yes, he's a fool
But he lives by his rules.
Yes, she's a whore
But who are you to keep a score?
Yes, he may be a loser
But, don't judge a book by the cover
Yes, she may be a slut
But, how many times were her wrists were cut?
You walk into someone's life, without a preamble or a past.
Yet you judge their story, like a blind man reading in the dark.
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