It’s soul-destroying, trying to fit in somewhere not made for you. Usually you just have to chop off parts of yourself.
You learn to keep silent when you know you should speak.
You work obscene hours when you yearn for time in nature.
You acquire skills in areas that bore or sicken you, because you’re told that’s what you have to do to get ahead.
You conform.
But – we’re changed by what we participate in.
If we conform to an inhuman system, we lose humanity.
If we try to belong in a place we don’t belong, we become who we’re not.
Increasingly it’s clear the economic and social system does not serve most of us. It serves a tiny minority and enslaves the rest.
It demands we give up our innate human tendency to collaborate and instead, always compete.
It asks us to overwork at the expense of creativitty, health, family, friendships and personal growth.
It profits from our distraction instead of encouraging us to be present and grateful for what is.
It asks us to treat ‘nature’ as a resource, to use and throw away – yet at the same time tells us recycling plastic bottles is a moral duty (ignoring the apocalypse corporate and military forces unleash every day against human and other life on our planet).
Yet we’re told we must fit in.
We’re taught we must give up who we are, individually and collectively, that we must discard the best parts of being human, to conform with the inhuman demands of an inhuman culture.
Fuck that.
Sure, we each need to compromise. Unless we’re born rich, we need to put food on the table and warmth into the house.
We need to do what’s necessary to survive in a system not designed for us. But we do not have to fit in.
Even if we must smile at those with power over us, we can keep in our hearts an unshakable belief that we’re better than this – and we can enact that belief in a thousand different ways each day:
- in a kind word
- a selfless act
- a work of art
- support for someone desperate
- through community or political activism and solidarity
- in how we raise kids to be generous and full of awe
- by planting a tree
- by walking away from inhuman organisations and investing time, attention and money where they do real good
- in being generous to those who probably want the same things we do, but have different ideas of how to get there
- in stepping off the conveyor belt and saying: ‘this much I will compromise and no more’.
We do not have to fit in with people and places where we do not fit.
Conform where you must, rebel where you can.
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I can help you find calm & focus.
I can help you connect & communicate.
I can help you unleash your creativity.
Sure – you can do all this on your own.
But it will be quicker and a lot more fun if you do it with me.
For coaching and conversation – be in touch
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