Unfortunately, in this world, many people give others what they themselves are missing.
They oppress others out of fear. They feel pain and, because they don't want to understand their own pain, they end up spreading it. I know you are hurting — deeply. Maybe you do this to yourself because you never found what you were looking for: belonging.
Sometimes we grow up without knowing exactly where we come from, inside a family that humiliates us, when, deep down, perhaps those same people only wanted to be loved. But they weren't loved in the way they wanted to be.
Sometimes we even leave our country in search of belonging and still seem unable to find it. You feel like a being from another world. But how can you be from another world if no one knows another world?
There are mothers who become grandmothers and seem to be better grandmothers than they ever were mothers. Perhaps there is a kind of unconscious ritual of forgiveness in that: an attempt to give their children's children what they themselves were never able to give their own children. We give the world what we received from it.
Now, when we have children, the humiliations can seem to happen even more often.
Notice this: many times, people hurt us with words they themselves cannot say to themselves. They are words that, if they were seeds, might not even germinate inside them. They cannot nourish themselves with what they offer to others.
And many times, striking back, screaming, and shouting at the world doesn't work. It only repeats the cycle.
When someone insults you, perhaps you can simply say:
“I forgive you.”
And walk away.
Don't argue. Don't explain. Don't try to win. Just say it and remain still, even if, at that moment, it isn't true. Even if, inside, you want to strike back.
Because the person provoking you has some power over you as long as they can pull out of you exactly what they want.
That's their problem.
Day after day.
It isn't an easy task. People can control us with harsh words. But there are also lucid, solid words capable of saying something that person may never have received — and that is precisely what can break them.
You don't have to be friends with someone who hurts you. You only need to set boundaries.
But constantly telling someone how deeply they hurt you can sometimes give fuel precisely to the person who wanted to cause that wound.
The world, unfortunately... Enduring life doesn't mean enduring everyone... It belongs to those who endure and hold on to the life they have, because, at that moment, it is the only thing they have.
There are bad days. There are good days. And there are days when absolutely nothing happens.
All of it is part of life.
Don't live in tomorrow. Live in today.
You don't have to be the best. Do what you can bear.
No one lives in tomorrow.
Anxiety takes us there because tomorrow cannot be seen. We can only live now.
Like this text.
Tomorrow, nobody knows who will have read it today.
It may take days. It may take years.
But someone may find it.
And when they do, perhaps that tomorrow will already have become that person's today.
Words hurt, but they can also heal. (Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter — and the Bible says something similar in its writings.)
I know what that is like.
And I also know that money helps a lot. It would be naive to say otherwise. Money buys security, time, treatment, comfort, and possibilities. But money can also be like placing a hundred-dollar bill over your eyes so you don't have to see the world.
You're still there.
The bill can block your vision for a while, but eventually it runs out.
And when it does, whatever was in front of your eyes is still there.
Because money can buy things. It can buy a kind of freedom that we confuse with happiness. But it does not necessarily buy belonging, roots, acceptance, healing, or peace.
Sometimes we can pay to avoid feeling a void, but we cannot pay to make that void cease to exist.
And perhaps that's why some people spend their lives accumulating things: not because things are enough, but because they need to keep putting something between themselves and whatever they cannot bear to look at. #enduring