Heirlooms4Posterity

I’m crying my eyes out as I sit here and write this. Sometimes it’s so hard to be a part of this world. It hurts me so much. I see so many people and animals in dire need of food, water and simple human kindness and there aren’t enough of us out there who give a crap. My heart feels like it’s going to explode with the amount of grief I feel right now. There are so many wrongs and I feel I’m too small, too unimportant to fix, to make the hurt go away. So I suffer with them. With the abandoned children, with the neglected elderlies and the little critters around us who just need some love and a little kindness. I suffer with them, though I know I can’t even imagine the extent of their hurt and loss. My heart is broken and today I have a day of no silver linings. I’m simply hurt and I don’t understand.

Why is it that hard to have a little compassion?

What will you loose if you share a little something of your own?

Is showing a little gentleness and empathy going to kill you?

This world has so much potential. But we ignore it. We have so much potential. And we ignore it. Wake up! You only have to gain if you share a bit of yourself.

Please, please be kinder to the world around you. Don’t just keep your hands to yourself and let a little light shine through. Help. Give back. Don’t hide away from those who need you to be strong. Their love and the gratitude in their eyes will lift you to heights you can’t even imagine.

Just try. Please try. The world needs you to try.

Photo by: Eddl van W. at source.

Who we are is made up of things we couldn’t/can’t control and things we can. Our reactions, however big or small, will come from one of those positions. Things that we cannot control and are instilled are things like our biology and genetics. We can, on the other hand, control how much time and energy we spend on our mental state.

Answer these questions for yourself:

Do you work out and if you do, how much?

Do you eat what you consider a healthy diet?

Do you think you generally take good care of your body?

On the other hand:

How many times a week do you do things like meditation or how many times do you choose to work out your brain?

We like to neglect the organ that is, in my opinion, the most important part of our bodies. We don’t do it on purpose, of course, but it is a reality for most of us. Our brain has the sole capacity to keep us alive even in the most dire circumstances and when all else fails, yet we seem to think we have no power to manage our brain and how they work and react. Most of us pull more focus on our extremities and how strong we keep them than on our very cores (and there’s nothing wrong with keeping our bodies healthy, don’t get me wrong). Here’s where the term “mental lifestyle” comes in: a choice of how fit your brain is and the manner of how you choose to perceive things.

I wrote about things like out genetics and how we cannot control that aspect of our psychology. That’s a given. The amount of success when working against the grain of your genealogy is debatable and I find myself completely incompetent of saying you can or cannot overrule what Mother Nature gave you. My way of thinking is more collaborative: actively working with what we were given in order to achieve balance and happiness. Sometimes that means pushing ourselves a little against what we were given and other times working with what we’ve got: finding balance whenever we can.

My way of looking at my own mental health is a partnership with myself. I won’t always be able to push myself all the time and stubbornness will only get me so far. My mental lifestyle is centred around 1) being gentle with myself when it comes to mental health and how far I’m willing to push myself and 2) being kind to the world around me. Staying happy and healthy (physically and mentally) is very important to me. But to me, being happy and healthy also includes others. Earth’s mental lifestyle is important to me, too. My happiness is, generally speaking, a collaboration between my mental health and the mental health of the planet.

I’d like for us to leave an inheritance of positive outlooks and a planet that is healthy. We can only do so by starting with us and a little bit of a changed perspective of how we see our lives and the importance of the ones around us.

I’m a quick thinker- well, at least in the sense that it doesn’t take me long to form an opinion: if something sounds good, I’ll usually take it on board without giving it too much of my mind space and time, then use it when I need to. This also happened with the “Kill them with kindness” phrase. It sounds good: it’s always great to be kind and that’s that. I heard it and I liked it.

And then something strange happened :D. I started thinking about what I ACTUALLY think about this sentence and why it felt off.

(Sidenote: wow, does all this sound horrible: I feel like I’m a loonie who never thinks of anything and now I’m putting that “confession” on the internet :D. I’m sure I’m not the only one out there with a mind as quick to form an opinion as mine is, so that’s okay too, I guess.)

I usually let phrases like this help me with certain situations and this particular little sentence helped me out when I felt a little disappointed with someone’s rudeness and lack of manners towards me. So I said to myself:”Smile and kill them with kindness.”

The phrase suddenly felt off to me. Why?

If you split the phrase into two parts, you get, of course: 1. Kill them, 2. With kindness.

The second part is not a problem … duh. But the killing part? Killing is never, under any circumstance a good thing. So you’re essentially hurting someone by being kind to them. To me, that means that when someone is being nasty to you and they expect you to retaliate, you fight back with being overly kind and thus making their lives even worse, because now they feel beaten by you: you’re the bigger person and they’re petty and small. You’ve won, they’ve lost. Ha ha!

How long does this “Ha ha!” moment last? How does it make you feel? Probably like a five-minute winner.

And it works, this way of hurting someone by being really really nice to them (possibly with a nice cynical smile). It works if you’re a child (a child that will hopefully overgrow this way of dealing with a certain situation), or an adult with quite a lot of personal growth that still needs to be attained.

Killing someone with kindness is just another way of being mean. It’s so hard not to be petty sometimes and not let the inner child come through and just rip someone up with words (it’s even worse when you act like you’re not phased and you’re just simply being a lovely person towards someone being extra mean). I know it’s super hard and being cynical and extra nice is so easy, plus it seems so rewarding.

But you really have nothing to gain in the long run.

Kindness should never be a weapon. People will sometimes be nasty and hurtful: it doesn’t matter if you’re the world’s kindest or meanest person. It will happen and there’s not much you can do about that. It’s up to you to make sure that no matter what, you stay true to yourself. Be a winner for life and strive to stay gracious when you feel attacked, don’t stoop to a level you’ll regret later. It’s not worth the loveliness that is you. Instead of “Kill them with kindness” think “Cure them with kindness”.

This will be a post with very little words an plenty of photos. It’s a post fo those days when you feel like your name is Debbie Downer and there ain’t nothin’ that could take away your blues.

WELL, PUPPIES AND KITTENS AND EVERYTHING ELSE CAN! 🙂

Fluffy and non-fluffy little critters have the power to go deep into our hearts- deeper even than humans sometimes can. Let the love flow over you as you take a look at these images …

Photo by 820453820 at source.

Photo by 820453820 at source.

Feeling any better yet? 🙂

Photo by Belal Khan at source.

Photo by Christian Heilmann at source.

Photo by digital_image_fan at source.

I can’t stand how cute these little munckins are!

P.s. It’s time to take the Debbie Downer name-tag off and go send some good cheer into the world :).

P.P.s. You’re welcome 😉