Saturday, April 13, 2013

Negligent optimism

I told someone I've known for a long time but not seen for quite a while about my internal tectonic plate realignment procedure (it involves psychotherapy, allowing the past to pass, becoming comfortably alone, comfortably in company and defining and finding what I want) and she said:

"Remember that it could always be worse."

Whilst it seems like an optimistic phrase, it resonated in me as being a thoroughly apathetic approach.
I would like to gently dispute that everyone should always remember that it could always be better. Everyone should encourage themselves to be healthy and human to the finest of their capacities, and find methods and other people who can help them become a healthy human (don't ask me what that is yet).

Whilst it's true that everything could be worse, thanking the supreme that you haven't fallen down the stairs and broken both your legs or that your mother hasn't committed suicide or that you weren't born in a refugee camp in Mogadishu is a way of ignoring how your own life could be improved which stops you from becoming better and actually capable of helping people with broken legs or no government, no infrastructure, no education and no money.

The hierarchy of duty of care should start with your self and trickle outwards in all directions like a domino effect. How will I know how to care for someone else if I don't know how to care for myself?

Prior to internal tectonic plate realignment procedure



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