philosophical Thoughts, Life Advice, and Unpopular Opinions

The Middle Ground Between Strength and Kindness

I've seen and experienced two extremes when it comes to dealing with emotions and life in general. Either people are way over emotional and break down over everything, take most things personally and care too much about what everyone thinks. But these people are kind and caring, right? 

 Everyone else doesn't give a crap about what anyone thinks and seems to not get emotional over ANYTHING, except they get angry at everything and hate everyone. They trust literally no one and will spit in your face quicker than they would shake your hand. They have a "tough" face and don't care about anyone but themselves. But they never get hurt, right? They're stoic and strong, right?

I'm going to tell you a big secret....

Are you ready for it?

Are you sure?

Here it is....

None of those are healthy. 

Finding the happy medium between being strong and being loving is a difficult skill and a lost art. Now let me make this clear; I'm still learning it myself, so I'm by no means saying I've got this all down. But here's what I do know:  you can still care for someone and not take everything they do or say personally. Yes, if they let you down, it's still going to hurt, but it's a different kind of hurt. When we take things personally, get offended, or care too much about what other people think, we are hurting for ourselves, not the other person. That's the kind of hurt that's unproductive and should be avoided. Don't hurt for yourself. If anything, hurt for the other person. If your classmate lashes out at you and calls you an idiot, instead of thinking "Wow, I can't believe she called me an idiot!! What did I ever do? Am I really an idiot? What if she's right!?" think "Wow, I can't imagine what she must be going through that would bring her to lash out at me. I should pray for her." That's how you can be strong but still caring. 

We don't just get emotional over people, we also get emotional over certain events, objects, and ideas. Like when someone flips a driver off when they get cut off on the freeway, or when someone slams the coffee table when they see they're behind on the bills, or when a wattpad user gets angry and types out a very angry and abusive novel in the comment section when they see an unpopular political opinion. Why should there be any emotion attached to objects or ideas? Now certain events, like a loved one dying, that's natural to get emotional over. It's really the person you had an emotion attached to, not the event itself. 

My point is that emotions (mostly negative emotions) are there to warn us about a problem. It's our mind's natural red flag mechanism to tell us something is wrong. You can't use emotion (including anger) to solve a problem. What you can do is acknowledge the emotion, pin point the problem that's causing that red flag to go up, let that emotion go, and then do what you can to solve the problem.