Good morning, hope you are having a nice day!
I have been thinking a lot about what to do with my email list and how to serve both my readers and my own ambitions. I am trying out something new here, and I hope to create something meaningful. I would like to offer a little break, a virtual get away from life, some interesting things and only a few topics for you to read - when you are having your coffee in the morning or afternoon. Because coffee accompanied by good stuff to read can be a great thing, I hope you agree.
This week, I brought you three topics that have been on my mind to give you some food for thought (ehem, coffee).
Why would people allow others to hurt them?
If you are following me, you might have read a few things about my past relationship - which was, to say the least, tumultuous. I have come a long way since the end of it and I believe I evolved into a very different person over these years.
I have been thinking a lot about relationships and especially deliberate hurt in relationships. And the more I think about it, the fewer excuses I can come up with for those who cause harm - which is a good thing, for I was looking for and finding excuses for years! I have been also thinking, with some guilt and a lot of introspection, what would make people accept the hurt and not speak up, defend themselves or walk away.
I am all for finding our own responsibility in all cases in life, and playing the victim has never been my resort either. But there are some surprising reasons that don’t seem logical but will still result in tolerating pain and abuse. I wrote about it, here: 4 Surprising Reasons Why You Let Others Hurt You
Gun violence
The US is the only country in the world where ‘things going back to normal’ means that gun violence and mass shootings start again. Being an outsider, someone from another continent, in this case, means as if I was from a different galaxy, and as such, I simply don’t understand it. I live in a country that is obviously not perfect and I could start listing all the problems we have here, but gun violence and shootings are not one of them. They don’t exist. At all. For this reason, I can only empathise with the victims’ families and cringe in horror. I can’t even begin to understand this kind of senseless loss, but I also don’t get how very lenient gun policies still exist.
It might sound unpopular, but people need rules and restrictions, they need sanctions, they need external things to curb their animalistic instincts. This is why societies evolved, this is why legislation exists and law enforcement is necessary. This is why gun policies are paramount. In the name of free will and freedom in general, granting free access to firearms to literally anyone, is not liberty, it’s plain irresponsible.
I truly hope that the new administration will take this issue seriously. And I hope we learn how to correct course.
I found this piece from Jessica Wildfire extremely on point: Our Culture is Turning Us into a Bunch of Hyper-Aggressive, Homicidal Maniacs Give it a read, think about it. It all starts with awareness.
Finding yourself after being lost
Every now and then, we need to reinvent ourselves. The point of life is that we are capable to adapt to new situations without losing sight of our core values. In some cases, life forces us to reimagine more than what we feel comfortable with. It pushes us too far, making us rethink everything we have known and makes us face situations we never really wanted.
This past year pushed us all out of our comfort zones, it made us rethink our relationships, our priorities, the speed of our accelerated lives. We lost so many things and we were forced to discover our internal strength to endure this period of adaptation. It is as if we lost sight of the shore - our previous life - because of all the tidal waves washing over us one after the other, each one is slightly bigger than the previous one, taking us always further out. But maybe we are heading for different shores, maybe we need to let go of the life that we had, maybe there is something better out there - only if we could just let go of the idea of swimming against the tide.
It all reminded me of my past relationship and all the challenges I had to face. It made me think about how I had to give up the idea of a time that was gone, along with the idea of myself - that was also gone. To be able to grow means that you need to be okay with letting the past go, keeping all the learnings but moving on. I, for one, realised that I was toxic towards myself. That while I surely didn’t deserve to be treated as I was treated, I didn’t stand up for myself, didn’t verbalise what I wanted and what I wouldn’t tolerate. My ex was abusive, but I enabled him to hurt me by my own toxicity. Read the full article about it here: 6 Terrible Traits Of Highly Self-Toxic People
This is all for this week. Hope you enjoyed our coffee together. I surely did. If you want to buy me a virtual coffee, please go ahead here.
I’m ever so grateful that you are still here, reading me.
Much love,
Zita