If you were raised Calvinist, then good on you for getting out of the mindset of feeling like your decisions don’t matter. I hope you feel less judged and less like those external judgments matter to your value than you grew up with as well.
As long as we’re here saying true stuff: even if there’s not much hope for your folks turning their heads around about you, I think you are living your life with the kind of painful hope that comes from not armoring yourself against the world, not numbing yourself to be less sensitive to it’s dire and terrible ways, but doing what you can to feed yourself and others a diet of beauty and the connection that makes life worthwhile in the face of oppression. That is a legitimate form of bravery, and it is absolutely a choice, even if you are making it reflexively, at the emotional level. Unconscious choices are still choices. For the sake of accuracy, please add “brave” to your own evaluations of yourself.
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branchandroot
Re: *
Date: 2024-12-27 12:44 pm (UTC)As long as we’re here saying true stuff: even if there’s not much hope for your folks turning their heads around about you, I think you are living your life with the kind of painful hope that comes from not armoring yourself against the world, not numbing yourself to be less sensitive to it’s dire and terrible ways, but doing what you can to feed yourself and others a diet of beauty and the connection that makes life worthwhile in the face of oppression. That is a legitimate form of bravery, and it is absolutely a choice, even if you are making it reflexively, at the emotional level. Unconscious choices are still choices. For the sake of accuracy, please add “brave” to your own evaluations of yourself.