My Shoes

Hurt comes in all shapes and sizes.

A cry is heard, every single time a baby is born. We come in life through hurt, experiencing hurt, and our most formative years are spent hurting. When we learn to walk, we often fall. We get hurt. We get back up. We get hurt, again when we try to walk again, but haven’t yet figured it out exactly how. Then, later in life, we hurt when we learn more, experience more. The first time you ride a bike, you get hurt. The first time you play a sport, you got hurt. The first time you played a game, you lost and got hurt. Your first love, has left you hurt. Your first relationship has left you hurt. Your first fight with your mother, father or family, it is hurting still, maybe. You and your best friend when you had your first fight, it hurt. All the things we live through bring hurt. Life is nothing short of hurt. Whether it’s verbal, physical, mental, hurt is there from the moment you are born, to the moment you die of hurting too much. But, we learn to cope with those things. some, do better. Some, worse, through alcohol, drugs, gambling, food or any other similar addictive process or thing that can help fill the void, at least temporary. But, most of us do not learn how to cope. There is no such book about coping that can apply to everyone everywhere. Yet one thing we seem to keep forgetting is that we all hurt all the time.

Oh, I am not exaggerating, did you know that when your stomach is digesting food, it actually hurt your body physically? The reason you do not know that, or feel that, is because our body has a somewhat healthy way of dealing with that and not transmitting that hurt to your brain. So, hurt can be ignored, hurt can be bottled up, hurt can be dealt with appropriately. But that is, if we learn how to deal with it. But no one teaches you that, and those that try, most are putting you on a path of hurting even more. If you do not know how to process the hurt, if you do not know to vocalize your hurt, if you do not know how to cope with your hurt, that will bring you more hurt. And in this world of violence, hurt is literally everywhere at every corner, as hurt is part of our communal experience and culture. Our most prized art is about hurting, is making you feel hurt, rarely do we appreciate those that try to create art that heals. So, if we all hurt. If we all are born through hurt from labor, why do we break so easily and never get ourselves back together? Because the world is created by those hurt to hurt others. So when everyone is hurt, the world itself is one of hurt, the system we deal in is one that is hurting us.

So, then, why do I expect someone that is hurt to understand me? Why do I expect someone that can’t piece themselves together to look at my hurt and understand it? When clearly, they can’t understand their own hurting and how can their perspective even engage with my hurting? If their can’t fit into my shoes, nor are they even will to walk in them, why do I keep expecting them to do as I do? Why do I keep expecting them to understand what they did to hurt me? And why do I expect them to put in the effort to understand how I am hurting? When they can’t seem to get out of their own shoes, and even attempt to put on my shoes on. Life is full of hurt, but in this hyper-individualized world created by this violent system made by these hurt people to hurt people, we need more people that understand. You can understand whatever subject, system, thing, as much as you’d like, but if you never try to understand it from the human perspective, for the side that is hurting, you are not just missing the point, you will contribute towards creating a better tomorrow. Because then, you are acting to protect your privilege instead of creating equity and helping the world rid of much of the hurt its creating.

So, when you refuse to walk in someone’s shoes, and you simply react based on what presumptive image you have of them in your head, rather than listen and assess the things being related to you, there is no hope in my opinion, for you to understand the hurt of many. Hurt has many shapes and sizes, much like our shoes, but saying that all shoes are the same, is silly. My shoes, are different than your shoes. My hurt has been going on longer than you have seen or known. My shoes are more worn than yours for a multitude of reasons. Just because I use my shoes different than you do, does not mean that my shoes are less valuable than yours or anyone’s. They’re shoes, they’re made for walking. Much like the hurt that’s made to hurt you, one does not negate the other. But one did come before the other, so, if you refuse to walk in my shoes, but you’ll gladly walk in my enemy’s shoes, then how can I take what you tell me in good faith? Have you walked in my shoes before you spoke? Have you even imagined yourself where I am standing? How I am feeling before you wrote? I do not expect anyone to fully understand what I am going through, we all hurt in our own unique way. But, if you care about my hurt, I expect you to do the bare minimum and put yourself in my shoes first.

People Don't Understand Violence: Part 2 - It's Not Just Physical

Freedom isn’t violent, violence is violent…

It’s not just war, bombs, hate crimes, murders, fist fights, assassinations, violence is so much more. I don’t think there’s a need for me to explain how beating your wife or war is bad. So, we will pass these things. As violence is every present everywhere you look. But people will not seem to face that fact because it feels like they like to relish in that type of violence. Be it because they take part in it, or they enjoy it as it is targeted towards people they do not like for any arbitrary reason that makes no real sense. But we need to unlearn this, violence is not just one that is seen.

A. Verbal Violence

Violence comes in so many forms. Verbal, is another popular form of violence. Whether it’s verbal abuse of a significant other, racist, xenophobic, hateful stuff, slurs and their use. There are so many ways of being violent through words. But, luckily, lately we being to understand that and fight back against such behavior or at least label it correctly, such that we can say “this is bad”. Which means we can do something about it. And if we can understand this, we might understand others as well. For example, it seems that a great subsection of abuse, which is political or systematical abuse is still a mystery for many.

B. Political Violence

Policy makes system, system makes policy, it’s a vicious corrupt circle. But we need to understand that these two things are tied together. One can not be without the other. If violence is present in one, then it is present in the other as well. Same goes for corruption and everything that is bad, not just violence. But let us start with strictly policy…

1. Strictly Policy

Contrary to popular belief these days, assassination attempts are not the only type of political violence. Policy and law can be violent as well. For example, the UK and France restricting the right to protest. That is a violent precedent that steps on the rights of these people. I don’t think I have to explain to you how apartheid is bad, how the Holocaust and genocide is bad, how the Jim Crow era was bad, how war is bad and that all this usually starts with policy and law. The Holocaust was legal, and you’ve probably read that multiple times. We’ve talked about this in the previous post about Historical Consequences. So, hopefully you understand how all that is violent. Because otherwise we’d be stuck here for eternity. But, if you understand those things, you understand the base level of political violence and how it can have many forms. 

So, now that we get that out of the way, there are plenty of other ways policy and law can be violent. Basically anything that restricts your freedom and makes your life harder is violent. For example, if you have rights, and a certain group of people do not have the same rights you have, that is political and systematical violence. Why? Because they do not have access to certain rights. And anyone against that, is violent against said group of people. Red lining, a thing that happened in the US where if you were of a certain color, you were not able to buy a house there. That is also political violence. Here’s another example, let’s say you were born in a city. You went to school, you got your degree, you work hard, but by the time you started school to now, the price of housing has gone through the roof. That is political violence, as it is tied to directly to policy of your government and it affects you directly. The government could do something about it. Plenty have done so, there are studies on this which could bring a solution. But the people in charge have an inherent interest in not doing something, because they are systematically using the excuse of a free market to plump their pockets and those around them in order to profit. And it’s really difficult to think they are just incompetent when we have too many examples, studies, exposes of them doing these things on purpose. And not with just housing, food, water, and pretty much everything else that could make our lives better, which got harder and harder to attain. Just like creating a family, pollution, global warming, these are things policy could change and make our lives easier and better. But the violent system will not accept such a change for the loss of profits.

2. Strictly Systematical

So when everything is for profit, and profit comes at the expense of workers, what is this system if not violent against the cogs it uses to function? A corporation can bribe officials, to get a license to dry out a lake, put a fence around it and sell the water to the locals. Something Nestle is really good at. That is violence. And it is brought on by this system. A system in search of maximizing profits for the shareholders. It doesn’t matter if an African village is left to die or walk 1.5 km to the nearest water source, if Nestle can sell you that water for 1 dollar when the salary there is 2 dollars per hour, that’s all that matters. Now, I don’t think I have to explain to you that worker exploitation is bad. But while this is a real extreme example. Just like the children making your iPhones, picking your cocoa and coffee beans, you are also exploited. If a corporation makes 4 billion a year, pays out its CEO with 3 million dollars, yet you make 600 bucks a month, you are being exploited. And the governments allowing this, makes it legal. Thus this is a violent systematic problem, affecting us all. So every single thing an employee can do to profit and not pay you, is inherently violent. And when this is at the very core of the philosophy of everything we do, then everything is violent by its nature as this is its system. And you can’t change your jobs out of it, or bootstrap yourself out of it. You can only join in the violence and start your own business, if the entrance level is low and exploit others.

You can mask it as incompetence, corruption, the free market, freedom of expression, political freedom, religious freedom, whatever you want to call it, this system is one with violence at its core. Remove the violence, the system is suddenly called something else. Because this system needs profit, profit needs exploitation of workers, exploitation of any kind if violent. So if we want to change this system, we need to change. We need to stop making excuses for what is. In no fair world, no matter how responsible one is, one should have access to everything and have all their rights, if they do not impede the rights and freedoms of others. And no, there is no right to be a bigot.

I promise we will talk what you can actually do and solutions some other time. But this two parter was about violence and most its forms. 

You can read post early on Nobody The Extra Blog with the tagline “I actually do love people very much, but…”

When I Look at Me

Existing is complicated.

If you live you are going to create stuff. You create actions which creates a reaction, this in turn creates memories. Now,, with those memories you do as you please. You think as you please and as you can. But, something you can’t do, is undo those things. You can apologize, take responsibility for those actions. Get forgiven and forgive yourself, but you can not undo what’s been done. Which is fine. And if you’re thinking that you can undo because you can repair stuff, we’re going to enter a long discussion about a certain ship and I do not wish that upon you. So, as you exist you do things, things are being done to you, and thus existence is a constant flux of things happening all the time and all the time happening constantly to you. And, as a writer, I can not help but look back at myself. The first time I did that, it broke me. Now, a second time, I do not have the same self-esteem problem when it comes to my own ego. Which sounds fake coming from me patting myself on the back, but I have a point with this. I wanted to see if I can reinterpret some of my old posts from the original blog from 2008 for you here, with a new perspective. As I have done at the beginning of this blog when we moved over to this website. But looking back, some of the stuff I posted did not age well. Not because it was anything bad, morally speaking, but because I do not feel the same frustration as I did back then. And I have a better way of putting things into at least a certain perspective, which would make more sense even for my old self.

And that is a complicated feeling to face, while happy that I can do that, which is what we should all try to strive for… Have an answer to the questions our old past selves had. A dream, for sure, as many questions have no answer, and some answers can never become a solution in our live times. Depending on the scale of the question and the answer. But, I can’t help it, when I look at me, who I was, at that the frustration I had, that even if I had the answer, there was never something I could do about any of that back then. Nor do I think it would’ve satisfied me. But rather put more flames beneath my wings to try more, do more stuff, no matter if I knew something or not. And I wish I had the same drive I did back then. But I do not, and that is the one thing I can only admire about my old self, the stubborn, dumb, self determination to do something, anything, everything. Yet I think this is more of a universal feeling we all have after a certain age. Whether you remember how much you could work, how much you could do, how brave you were, how fun you were, these things are what drive the mid-life crisis, are they not? Finding these things in us are always fine, in my opinion, as long as we apply the wisdom we got through living and we don’t just throw ourselves without thought to do the things we used to.

So, I can’t help but look at myself and ask if the way I am is okay. If there’s something else I should have done to be better, become someone that’s more than I am right now. I’ve been ruminating on a book that I could’ve finished in two weeks for 6 years. I could’ve done so much more if I had the courage I had when I was younger, at least that’s what I am inclined to think, yet at the same time I would’ve been in so much trouble, if I had that courage and impulse. So, when I look at me, I can’t help but think of how lucky I am to be who I am now, riddled with anxiety, yet with stuff I always wished to have. Not as sure of myself as before, but doing things I love. Yet, despite all of that, if you’re an overthinker, there’s always some if, some maybe, some something that someone could have done better, should have done better. So when I look back at me, I there are mixed feelings, yet there’s not much regret or hate. So, when I look at myself know, I can’t help but be excited for what I will think of this moment right now in ten years from now. What I’ll think of myself and these words then? What new wisdom will I have? What new answer will I have to the frustrations I have now. to the questions I have now… What do you think? What do you feel? What critique do you have? I ask now to my future self. 

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Here is the cover photo for an exclusive post on Nobody’s Extra Blog with the tag “If you ask people, love is… Complicated.” To read it visit the link above.