I've spent a good chunk of my life - too much of it - being a victim of other people's displaced anger, mental health issues, addictions, and bad choices and I see that mirrored on social media more often than I care to admit as far as the choices people make to engage in unhealthy behavior, negative actions, and take that out on others - or even worse - suffering themselves from a steady diet of negativity and abuse. That cycle needs to stop. You can stop it by choosing not to engage in it.

The bird can be left behind. The firehose can be unpinned. The choices you make going forward can be about safeguarding yourself and being your best self, your brightest self, for the betterment of others. There are no battles to be won against madness, cruelty, and abusive people ... you only give them power over you and you deserve better. CoSo, like any community, is full of good and bad elements. It will become what you choose to take in and what you choose to put out into it. You decide.

Engaging in a war of futility doesn't make you brave. Sacrificing your light against an endless tide of darkness only means you have less for the people who deserve that light most ... including yourself. The refugees will keep coming and they will bring their trauma, their baggage, their evil ... but you don't have to engage with it or give it power over you. We all know the trick to defeating monsters ... or maybe you have forgotten. Turn away. It's really that simple. It's a choice.

To all the good people who are having their light diminished, their patience stretched, their limits pushed ... this is no righteous fight if it means those who could benefit most from what you have to offer lose out on it. Your light, your positivity, the essence of who you are as a strong, kind, and generous person ... all those things are needed more by those who want to receive them, not by those who only want to destroy it. We need you more than they will ever be affected by your epicness.

Gatekeeping is a shitty practice but not when it comes to yourself, your sanity, and your light. Echo chambers are counterproductive but not when they echo feelings and beliefs regarding peace, positivity, mental health, and strength of spirit. Just as J and others work hard to make CoSo a walled garden to keep us safe, so do you owe yourself the very same kind of vigilance. Lock the gate. Guard the walls. Surround yourself with like minds and hearts that echo back the light you put out.

SelfISH is when you focus on yourself to the detriment of others. SelfNESS is when you focus on yourself so that you can be stronger, brighter, and healthier for the sake of others.

Engage in more SelfNESS.

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master.

Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.

#Stoicism