adiraeverley-blog

[adiraeverley-blog]

Are people meaner?

Is it me or are people meaner than they used to be. Everyone seems to be perfectly okay with just hurting someones feelings and I don’t really understand why. I often feel overwhelmed with the world that holds all its mean spirited selfish people. I come across so many people each and every day who are happy to hurt my feelings. However I can’t voice my hurt feelings because I’m named an oversensitive women if I do. If I’m upset I’ve even had people ask me if I’m a little hormonal. I often wonder why the world can’t be a kinder place. I have become fed up with being treated like I don’t have any feelings. But it seems to be the selfish, every man for himself way of the world at the moment. Is it too much to ask to be shown a little kindness.

[adiraeverley-blog]

Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

Don Miguel Ruiz (via quotemadness)

[adiraeverley-blog]

Please hear what I’m not saying.

Don't be fooled by me. Don't be fooled by the face I wear for I wear a mask, a thousand masks, masks that I'm afraid to take off, and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me, but don't be fooled, for God's sake don't be fooled. I give you the impression that I'm secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without, that confidence is my name and coolness my game, that the water's calm and I'm in command and that I need no one, but don't believe me. My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask, ever-varying and ever-concealing. Beneath lies no complacence. Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness. But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it. I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed. That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind, a nonchalant sophisticated facade, to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope, and I know it. That is, if it's followed by acceptance, if it's followed by love. It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self-built prison walls, from the barriers I so painstakingly erect. It's the only thing that will assure me of what I can't assure myself, that I'm really worth something. But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to. I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance, will not be followed by love. I'm afraid you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me. I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game, with a facade of assurance without and a trembling child within. So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks, and my life becomes a front. I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk. I tell you everything that's really nothing, and nothing of what's everything, of what's crying within me. So when I'm going through my routine do not be fooled by what I'm saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying, what I'd like to be able to say, what for survival I need to say, but what I can't say.

I don't like hiding. I don't like playing superficial phony games. I want to stop playing them. I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me but you've got to help me. You've got to hold out your hand even when that's the last thing I seem to want. Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead. Only you can call me into aliveness. Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings-- very small wings, very feeble wings, but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling you can breathe life into me. I want you to know that. I want you to know how important you are to me, how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator-- of the person that is me if you choose to. You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble, you alone can remove my mask, you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic, from my lonely prison, if you choose to. Please choose to.

Do not pass me by. It will not be easy for you. A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls. The nearer you approach to me the blinder I may strike back. It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man often I am irrational. I fight against the very thing I cry out for. But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls and in this lies my hope. Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands but with gentle hands for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well. For I am every man you meet and I am every woman you meet.

Charles C. Finn September 1966

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[adiraeverley-blog]

Avoid people who mess with your head. Avoid people who intentionally and repeatedly do and say things that they know upset you. Avoid people who expect you to prioritize them but refuse to prioritize you. Avoid people who can’t and won’t apologize sincerely. Avoid. Avoid.

(via purplebuddhaquotes)

[adiraeverley-blog]

The toxicity of social media...

I have come to the conclusion that social media is toxic. Although social media can be fun and bring joy into our lives by allowing us to connect with people we love, I do believe there is a dark side. We post our lives on social media, or at least the parts of our lives that we want other people to see. Over the years I have discovered that it has made me more vulnerable than I would like to be. Social media enables us to “stalk” people without their knowledge, it enables us to message and contact people without them giving us permission to do so, it allows us to post anything we like for the world to see. It gives us power that we otherwise would not have. 

The ability to stalk peoples lives leads us to discover things that we would be better off not knowing, it enables us to torment ourselves over the lives of people that have hurt us in the past when we would otherwise quietly move on. It gives the same people that have hurt us the power to continue their torment. Instead of moving on from emotional pain we relive it over and over again through social media, obsessing over the lives of these people that are not worth our time or our tears.

The ability to post and share within social media can be a powerful tool and in my experience is mostly used in a positive manner. However once something has been seen it cannot be unseen. I have known it to be used to “raise awareness”. Shocking photos and videos are posted on a subject the individual either supports or is against. Once these photos and videos are posted we are not given a choice but to see them, even at a glimpse, of course we can then hide them or report them but they cannot be unseen. This I know from personal experience can be damaging.

And why do we put ourselves through this? because we’re addicted? because human nature drives us to conform with society? or simply to stay connected with friends and family?

Social media has had a detrimental effect on my own mental health and I wonder how many others feel the same way. How many other people have had negative experiences through social media however minor they may be. 

Despite my own negative experiences and thoughts on the subject of social media I still continue to use it. I fear that for me this is an addiction. I long for the days when life was simpler and the internet didn’t exist. Would I be happier if I had been born in the past. Maybe.

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Choose to be kind...

Someone was kind to me today...not, say thank you, hold the door open for someone kind but actually kind. Like they meant it, like they wanted to be kind, and this surprised me. Why should  kindness be surprising? It saddened me to think that people so rarely choose kindness that I was a little surprised when it was shown to me. Small acts of kindness are so few and far between and can make such a big difference to someones day, yet we often unknowingly decide against it. In the busy whirlpool of our lives kindness is forgotten. Lost among thoughts of our own happiness and what our next move is going to be. Maybe if we put these thoughts aside for just a few minutes each day we might notice someone. We might then choose to show someone a little kindness who may really it that day. I wonder how much difference this would make.