Youthful Life: X

"The benefits and possibilities that are created created by being personally accountable are countless." Jay Fiset Accountability is truth actualized. Calls for unity without amends are inauthentic means of gaslighting, silencing, and minimizing harm. We cannot and should not move forward on any scale without the necessary recognition of all that has transpired. It's dangerous for all involved. Those that have caused harm continue aloof as to how they have caused harm for others and will continue to do so, or never take the opportunity to hold themselves accountable to responsibly own their "stuff." For those that are most directly impacted it's a questioning of sanity to even wonder if all that was experienced, felt, etc. was even real. It's a gutting discarding of truth in favor of prioritizing false comfort. People have to be uncomfortable. Harm has been caused. Pain has been given out. Violence in its forms has been perpetrated.  There's no real...

" An apology offered and, equally important, received is a step towards reconciliation and, sometimes, recompense. Without that process, hurts can rankle and fester and erupt into their own hatreds and wrongdoings." Margaret MacMillan Stop apologizing for the harm other people cause you . Stop forgiving people before they have done the work to ask for it or to change. Stop letting well-meaning people or “good intentions” dismiss their impact. It’s their job to own their impact; not yours to rationalize it away. Hold people accountable for their actions and their impact. People don't get to barrel through lives or the world without being prompted to look back and see what they've left in their wake. When we don't address the harm and its cause we deny ourselves healing, and closure, and let someone continue their behavior without knowledge of its impact. If we care about people, particularly those close to us, we will hold them accountable. We are obligated ...

"We are what we do repeatedly" Unknown I had a conversation recently where someone described themselves as a good person and I stopped/corrected them. People are not inherently good or bad, they do relatively good or bad things, and have a tendency  of those things. It made me think of who gets to be good or bad, whose perspectives are represented, who is typecast as what, and how does the curve of the arc of justice rectify all these imbalances. Who gets to posit themselves as good or bad? Who wins, and who loses? Who saves, and who gets saved? The false dichotomy of good and evil, like most things, plays into our social norms and their implications. People can do or say the same thing and based on how we've learned to interpret them and who they are we react differently. Goodness is not applied evenly. Not everyone gets the chance to be "good." Justice is relative. Proximity changes everything. How can we have absolutes in an uncertain world? Am I a go...

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an  act of political warfare”Audre Lorde Self-care is the buzzword of the year.  Think-piece, vlog, tutorial, etc. after another keeps being released but I don't think most people realize the full gamut of what it means to take care of themselves, and to do so with a genuine authenticity. Self-care in a world/society that demands you give the entirety of you and all that you are to others/your work is a bold stance in declaring that you, yourself matter. Self-care is any activity that we do deliberately to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health. Self-care is about intentionality, and being purposeful in what you're doing. Wellness in and of itself has different realms that holistically contribute to our sense of well-being. Those are emotional, intellectual, physical, social, environmental, financial, and spiritual wellness (with some others depending on who you ask). As ...

"The fundamental job of a toddler is to rule the universe" Lawrence Kutner Kids are truly awe-inspiring people . There's something about them and their fresh perspectives on the world that adults just don't quite get. The ways they understand or at least approach understanding the world has just as much nuance as it does randomness. When we take the time to pay attention there is much to be learned. I had the opportunity to spend a few a days taking care of two year-old nephew, affectionately referred to as the Little Prince by me, myself, and I. In that time I took so much from spending time with him, other than reaffirming how truly phenomenal he is as a person, just the applicable things he's learning/being taught and their implications for my life is an adult-in-progress. Patience, patience, patience. In a world where I am constantly moving, zooming, speeding, to an fro I had to adjust to his pace. The few moments I found myself getting frustrated with ...

Truth - We choose daily who and what we invest our time and energy into. Those choices range from the small moments where we converse politely with cashiers while buying three-ply toilet paper to dropping everything for a friend in need. We choose where we go, who we speak to, and how much energy we spend on them. Those choices deplete us. It's a combination of self-directed rejuvenation and the contributions of others that keep us from constantly being drained. What happens when we fail to recharge ourselves? What happens to our energy? "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." Albert Camus   We invite people into our lives . We give them permission to be here. We allow them into the sovereign territory that is us. It can be easy to be flippant with who we consent to welcome in to the privacy of our lives and how much. That flippancy though can go from misguided to problematic for the sake of our own well-being. Sometimes ...

Truth - Sometimes we have to forgive ourselves to set ourselves free. It takes absolving ourselves of some of the things we carry with us and those things we do not have control us that happen to us to exonerate us. We can create our imprisonment and subsequently can be the only ones to free ourselves from our self-induced bondage. We can be so critical and unrelenting of ourselves but may be causing our own demise. Cut yourself some slack, express your emotions, and be forgiven. "We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. They who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies." MLK Jr. What we mean when we say we have to forgive ourselves? For me personally, that is a notion I came to understand in college. Some of the past trauma I had never let go and carried with became too heavy to continue on with. I ...

The 20s are all about dictating your own experience. Too many times do we let frivolous petty things soil our fun. Good times are forgotten because of things or people that really don't matter. We let them get to us and instead of being fully present we get stuck in this knit picky cycle of ingratitude. Nothing is perfect but nothing just gets to be. Things are what they are. Take them that way lest you hyperbolize every negative instance that occurs. You are your own arbiter.  "Who are you are speaks so loudly, I can't hear what you're saying" Ralph Waldo Emerson There's more satisfying than self assurance. No matter what you're good. There's nothing anyone can say or do that will get to you. You find peace within yourself and throw your worries to the wind. Insecurity, doubt, and fear can and will come but they will always go because you're you. That means something truly profound. There is no one else in the world like you. No one get...

The 20s are all about reflection. There's something about looking back that always has this uncanny ability over us. You think back and all of a sudden you're transported to another day and time. Everything you felt just comes rushing back and you are bombarded with those emotions in a tidal wave of epic proportions. So many cringe-worthy awkward moments, embarrassing incidents, and of course those things/peiople you just want to forget ever happened. I've always wondered why we vividly remember the bad times and I've concluded that it's so we learn from them to move forward. The past is the past. Nothing stays the same. These are seasons of change.  2014 - the year of change. Wow. What a year! What can I say about the year that my life drastically changed forever? I guess there were several different phases I went though (key phrase there is through - as in, to move out of or passed). I started off the year with a severe melanch oly personality shift because...