Gandhi once said something akin to – happiness is when your actions and ideas are in harmony. I’d like a slice of that happiness. The happiness of living to your own moral code, to be in harmony with myself. That’s my aim this year, to be me, to respect my own choices, to back my own choices, and to be happy about it.
Everyday we make judgements and it’s important to do so. I judge pedophilia as wrong, I judge child abuse as wrong, I judge domestic violence as wrong, I judge hate crimes as wrong. I judge the beginnings of these things as wrong – sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, etc. My aim for this year is to stand firm in my moral judgements, to speak up about them, support those who likewise speak out, and not to be shamed into silence by those who would prefer bigotry to go unquestioned.
We all make our own judgements, it’s time we owned them. If you find your standards tell you something about yourself that you don’t like then change them don’t deny them.
I’m not saying this will be easy. And I am not saying that the attacks (ranging from passive agressive to flat out vitriolic) won’t leave me shaken at times. But in the long term I hope to get there, to that happy place of living my own authentic life. In the meantime I’ll just have to keep reminding myself of the great mantra from the movie Labyrinth – You have no power over me. Any time I feel shaken by someone attempting to silence or shame me I’ll simply whisper – You have no power over me.
Who wants to try it with me?
Write or Wrong 