Pray by Fori Y.
“Happiness can be found even in the darkest times if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
I’ve understood for a long time now that we’ve all been poisoned
We’ve been poisoned and manipulated and misled.
We have drunk the poison willingly, sometimes, or “willingly”;
We have been coerced into swallowing things that harm us;
By threat of violence, or threat of social ostracism, or ostracism enacted as violence;
Sometimes we believe them a lot – and sometimes just a little.
And if you ask me why I speak sometimes with people who do not understand the same things I do – that is what I will tell you.
We have all been poisoned.
And some of us sweat and fight to purge it, and some of us become poison to survive;
and I count myself among those fighting and sweating, so I will tell you now,
none of us are wholly free of it.
So when you ask me – “why do you speak to that soul who smells of poison -”,
These words are spoken between people also bearing poison.
It takes time and wisdom to know poison from nourishment and medicine.
To unbecome poison, too, one must learn another way to survive –
So someone must share those ways with people who are brimming with poison, who drank it to protect themselves,
And it doesn’t have to be you, but as long as I can, when I can,
it might as well be me.
Do I fear that others will taint me with their poison?
Sometimes – and I shield myself from the malicious;
but this whole place smells of death, and my weapons will not fight the air.
Sometimes nourishment comes with just a small taint – and if we refuse all nourishment, we will die faster.
So I choose my battles.
Sometimes I turn away.
Sometimes I drink it down.
I wake up sick with it some days – and forgive the ones who sickened me, and hope they heal.
For if they cannot heal from it, how will I?
💚
being soft, gentle and warm is a different kind of radical. the ability to allow yourself to be vulnerable is very powerful
Archetype Cards (The Beloved, The Provocateur, The Gravitas, The
Coryphaeus) by Janna Sophia
5 year old paladin. Has a very firm stance on the proper sharing of toys.
“you don’t get a cookie for being a decent human being”
lol, okay, but sometimes you do. like jfc why is it so bad to tell people “good job” especially when you want them to change their behavior and they have made progress towards doing so?
you teach people how to treat you, and i don’t think it’s news that positive reinforcement is a useful tool.
sometimes it’s like we don’t actually want others to do better, we just want to punish and punish and punish until we’re all exactly as miserable.
fuck that. i’m having cookies.
This is attitude is some irksome to me as well. It’s somewhat related to the notion that in order to be good, you can’t be proud of when you do good things, and must diminish and minimize them in your own mind. This is not healthy, an neither is the above attitude.
Goodness by definition should be a benefit, and it’s not a bad thing to reward people, yourself or others, when you’ve done things that are good and virtuous. You put effort into it, it did not come from nothing.
And so many people I encounter here hurt and the diminish themselves with the noise that they are somehow unworthy of goodness, and I have to calmly assure that they are good for what they do and who they are. Don’t hurt people who are trying to be good by punishing them for that desire. Instruct, provide an example, teach, and assure that you do see the light in them.
Goodness, eudaimonia, happiness and virtue suffusing people to live as noble people, these things do not come by slapping them for either failure or not being quite as good as you wish. Teach, provide an example, reward. Remind yourself that you are good because you work hard to be good, and give others that same courtesy.
Earn that fucking cookie, and share it. Because you’re good people.
Never stop earning it. Never forget it.
Paladin Collection 