I don’t trust others enough anymore. In the past, when someone treated me disrespectfully, I had the strength to understand. I tried to convince myself that their intentions weren’t bad. Maybe the person was having a bad day or something stressful happened in their life. I believed that they weren’t inherently rude. I just changed my mindset.

Lately, I just can’t convince myself of things like that anymore. This “Me! Me! Me!” culture with all this vanity around it… It’s not just a bad day. It’s not bad intentions at all. It’s just bad role modeling. Behavior taken out of context. I can kind of feel the pain behind all these lost souls. It must be really hard for them, not believing in themselves. And desperately trying to get external validation for their own worth. It makes me feel sad.

I wish I could accept that, because it’s the reality of the moment. Because it’s their own process, in their own time. Someone wrote somewhere that the transition from impersonal crowd culture to conscious connection between individuals is complicated. It means going through a process of individuation. At one stage, the personal ego inflates. But this is only a stage of the process. It helps a person realize they cannot think they are better than others. They cannot measure others according to their own values and at the same time to have fulfilling relationships. The problem is that some go through this process and others simply imitate them, without understanding what they are doing.

I can understand people who go through a process of individuation. And I respect their journey. But I find it difficult to respect imitators who don’t understand why, but behave this way.

Daily writing prompt

What do you wish you could do more every day?

View all responses