What is something you wish people cared more about?
https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts
I’ll be blunt.
I wish people cared more about each other.
There’s too much hate and anger in the world. Simple as that.
And this applies globally, not about any singular group or nationality. Literally just everyone.
Can you admit a time you have likely caused a customer service person grief?
https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts
Honestly, this is something I’ve never fully understood, in general, about people’s behavior toward one another.
I don’t believe I’ve ever caused a customer service person grief, and that’s because of personal experience. I’ve been in that role multiple times in my life. From the video game store to food service. I know what they have to deal with on a daily basis, and I wouldn’t wish grief or anything of the sort upon them. The vast majority of times they’re just trying to do their job and get through their day. They aren’t out to get you or your family, and they aren’t trying to get in your way. Why treat them like they’re less than human over any of it?
Just be nice to each other out there. Especially this time of year.
Last time I answered this prompt I mentioned some things I like to make sure I know how to do (for the most part) like navigating. I’ll be taking a trip to a new city in a couple of months and I’ve already been looking up places and street names to try to familiarize myself with the area.
Some other things I think everyone should know include:
Too many people think they know better, and they wind up screwing themselves over or hurting other people.
What principles define how you live?
I’m going to keep things a bit simpler here and link back to a post I made back in May. In that post I talk about some words I live by.
The particular one I want to bring back up is my sort of “modified” Golden Rule.
Do unto others as you would have done unto you if you were acting the way they are towards you.
Bit of a mouthful and doesn’t really roll off the tongue, but I like it. It makes you think.
The reason I choose to live by this modified rule is as a safety measure of sorts for self-respect and self-esteem.
Kindness begets kindness, hate begets hate, things like that are part of the basics of the Golden Rule, but why should you show kindness to someone who is so clearly not going to reciprocate that kindness? If all I ever did was walk around being kind to people, then I’m likely to get manipulated and walked all over. So, instead, taking the Golden Rule a level deeper, I would treat them with the due respect I would like to receive should I be caught acting the way they are at that time.
If someone is acting like a complete asshole, I’m not going to just play nice and show them kindness, but I’m not going to be a complete asshole in return. I’ll be relatively polite but direct them away from myself without escalating the situation so that they don’t drag me down to their level because if I were in their shoes that’s how I would hope others treat me in return.
If someone is in need of help, I’d still help them to the best of my abilities, because I know that if I were in their position then I would probably want help as well. Provided that they don’t take advantage of the help and turn into a never ending problem of needing help. Then I’d do my best to help them get stable and make sure they’re able to take care of themselves beyond that situation, to be self-sufficient, because that’s what I would like to see happen for myself.
It should be that simple all the time. That’s what I believe and that’s how I try to live my life.
Sometimes I wonder about how long it takes, how old I need to be, to learn valuable lessons that others seemed to grasp well before I did. When I look to them, I also wonder if they ever really learned them in the first place or if they were naturally adept and have no idea what it would mean to “learn” those lessons.
I almost thought about titling this post around self-respect and image instead of self-importance, but I decided against it on account of perspective.
As kids, as teenagers, and even as adults, we often worry about what others think of us. What we wear, what we say, how we hold ourselves in the company of others. We get so in our own heads about all of it. And yet, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. For myself, part of me always kind of knew this, but I still couldn’t get over it.
Where I’m trying to go with all of this is to say that the lesson I wish I had learned earlier in life is to stop worrying about others perception of me, and to stop letting it affect my self-worth, self-importance, and self-esteem. Something that helped make this click is a 2-minute clip from a streamer by the name of Negaoryx who shared it on Twitter (I still refuse to call it X) of a troll in her chat that she chooses not to ignore and instead rips into them about being a piece of shit. To be clear, this persons actions are actually on the other end of the “self-importance” scale/spectrum from where I was at. I had very little self-esteem, where this troll was much more arrogant (and misogynistic, as you’ll see is called out if you watch the clip.) The words that resonated with me most actually come from near the end of the clip.
“…because you think you’re the hero of your own story, but you’re a footnote in everyone else’s.”
Those words, though not directed at me, made me realize that in this great big world, I am nobody. Yet, the same applies to everyone else. It can even go deeper if you stop to think about the fact that there are going to be billions of people in this world who never even know you exist.
So, where the troll is being put down (rightly) for being a misogynistic asshole, her words were almost uplifting to me in several ways. I don’t have to worry about what other people think of me (to a certain extent) because I could just as well be a faceless nobody to them, but I still need to remember that I am not nobody TO MYSELF. The world itself doesn’t revolve around me, but my world is everything around me. There are things I have control over, and things I don’t. It’s not worth the emotional stress of worrying about things I can’t control (other people and their perspectives) and I should only be concerned with what IS in my power to control (how I act and present myself.)
Along with all of the self-worth, -importance, and -esteem comes some amount of humility. Stop putting so much more value into what others think of you than what you think of yourself. Be happy with yourself, and not with who you want everyone else to think you are.
Provided you’re not a misogynistic piece of shit. We just need to be nice to each other.
Name the professional athletes you respect the most and why.
The short answer: I can’t name any.
The slightly longer answer: I don’t really care about any pro sports, so I don’t pay attention to teams or individual players. I’ve heard some names in the news, but I don’t recall almost anything about them. It’s hard to have respect for someone you don’t know. Are they good or bad people off the field/court? No idea.
That being said, it’s not like I actively dislike or show disrespect towards any pro athletes either.
How do you express your gratitude?
I try to live my day to day life in a way that I can be appropriately grateful to the people I interact with.
If someone does something for me, I try to make sure I end the interaction with a smile and a “thank you” because I believe that it means more to the receiver than I will likely ever know. They might be having a bad day, or have been interacting with a lot of shitty people, so if my interaction with them is peaceful then it’s just one less weight added to their conscience.
Sometimes, though, I do show my gratitude in ways that go beyond the smiles and the words “thank you”. If I’m out and about shopping, and I see something that makes me think of them, I’ll consider buying it for them with no expectations of getting anything in return. It’s just a nice gesture of mine for them being a positive part of my life.
Simple as all that. A smile, a “thank you”, and moving along. That’s the bare minimum, and it really can go a long way.
I’ll admit, I had to look up the difference between slogans and taglines. I wanted to be sure I had the right understanding of what was being asked in the prompt.
Sadly, as much as I understand the differences, I don’t have a good answer! Taglines are weird. From what I could read in 20 seconds of googling, taglines are like a weird middle ground between slogans and catchphrases, but lean more towards the latter? I don’t know, maybe I misunderstood.
If I had to have a tagline, and it was my choice of what it said, it would probably be something like “Always Moving Forward”. I’ll just leave it at that.
What quality do you value most in a friend?
Age really changes what we value in so many things, especially in different social climates/dynamics.
When I was a kid, I probably just valued friends I could hang out with because we had the same interests or hobbies. That didn’t change much when I got into my teens.
College and beyond is where things REALLY took a turn.
Heartache and betrayal in the arena of romance changes how you see people and interact with them. It changes what you value in people that you start to forge close relationships with (platonic and romantic alike). We may be going down different paths, meeting new people and getting into different hobbies at this time. Trust and loyalty became incredibly important through most of my twenties because of some of these things. I won’t go into the nitty gritty details of my love life, but suffice to say that there were some ladies that may have cheated or just not been completely honest about their feelings, and the latter applied to platonic friendships as well.
Talking about my thirties now (and I shudder to think that I’m only a few years away from the cusp of 40) I still value trust and loyalty, but I prioritize myself and certain other things differently so that I have more room for forgiveness, because people make mistakes. As long as something isn’t done maliciously and I didn’t put myself in a position to be hurt, I can be flexible and forgive a lot easier. Other things that I value that have come up in these recent years are communication and transparency.
In my mind these four values of trust, loyalty, communication, and transparency (as well as some others that can be tossed in without mention) can all be wrapped up into a singular package value: Respect.
To be clear, when I talk about trust and loyalty, or respect, my friends don’t “owe” me anything and vice versa, so I don’t demand respect be given without respect being returned. I just try to live by that Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Respect me and I’ll respect you.
Change is the only thing in this world and beyond that is a “constant”. The world a hundred years ago was very different from the world we know today, and it will change again. In all of that time the meaning of “freedom” has changed based on the needs of the people, and each time there is such a change we learn something new.
There is one thing that I try to look for when I think about what freedom can mean, not just for myself but for others as well. The bigger picture.
Freedom, to me, means to be able to live unimpeded. To live in ways that we each can be happy and healthy, without being hurt or dominated by others, and vice versa. Idealistic? Sure, but it’s as simple as all that, even if it is a pipe dream under our current world circumstances.
The Dragon's Grove 