“Respect the relativity.”
Three simple words, yet they form a truism my mind has circled back to time and time again as of late.
Growing up, I was taught not to care what that big world out there thought of me, with its dumb prejudices and biases. I was directed to be myself. I was instructed to let my freak flag fly. I was advised to offer my truest self to the world because it is rare, and it might just help someone out.
But recently, my truest self always felt like the least evolved person in the room, and I’m not exactly sure when I was taught that.
The curriculums I’ve gone through were lacking on the subject of self-actualization, so perhaps it was one of the even problems — an unspoken lesson I had to learn at home. And learn it I did. On elementary school playgrounds and in middle school hallways, the feeling that the dance of socializing and being a human wasn’t made with me in mind began sinking in.
I know it’s not just me who’s had to learn this, either. I think everyone learns what they aren’t long before they can even guess what they are to some extent, by any set of standards: beauty, sexuality, race, what have you.
It’s like we’re simultaneously striving to be ourselves while knowing that “ourselves” are imperfect — and in that regard, it’s a miracle any of us can show our face to the world.
Hence, the concept my mind centers on: “Respect the relativity.” I don’t think it’s fully just to invalidate parts of your emotional process or say that every stimulus of this world can be responded to with poise and rationality, but there are a few daily practices that help keep me aligned with that concept.
Try to acknowledge the scale of your battles in comparison to others, and likewise for others’ battles in comparison to yours. The will it may take for you to get in a full workout session at Markin could be similar to the will it takes someone else to get out of bed and brush their teeth.
Try to acknowledge what you have instead of ruminating at every waking moment over what’s missing. Some days, I owe my stability to the candy section at the POD, and beyond that, it’s nice to have a choice of consistent sources of food and drinks of any calorie count.
Try to acknowledge the steps you’ve already taken instead of beating yourself up over the steps ahead. I’m just now stepping into truths of a resolution that a younger me could never fathom, and I welcome the truths before me, whether I find them first or they find me.
Everyone’s on their own journey, and it’s striking how different the journey can look depending on how your mind opts to frame it. The only person you should be compared to is the person you were. Trust yourself until “yourself” becomes a memory in the mind of the you of the future, then trust them. And above all, respect the relativity.
We could all use a little grace, and besides — we’re all different people with different minds from different backgrounds. Why should we be expected to write the same story?
