These arms are meant to be wrapped around you
These lips are meant to be pressed against your skin
This mind is meant to be mingled with yours
A place where you can be human.
These arms are meant to be wrapped around you
These lips are meant to be pressed against your skin
This mind is meant to be mingled with yours
They’re going to belittle you and question your thoughts
Keep empowering yourself
Keep thinking
They’re going to tell you how you should feel
Keep feeling every little thing that ripples through your veins
They’re going to tell you don’t worry about it now you have your whole life ahead of you
Get it done
They’re going to try to convince you that you should be doing it their way
Don’t you dare stop doing things the way things work for you
And know I will support you when they all laugh at your ideas and call them silly and call you stupid
Your ideas are not to be laughed at. And should be taken respectfully.
And you my free spirit are abso-fucking-lutely
Not Stupid
Unconditional love is an act worth living and dying for.
-Saschia Johnson
Yesterday, I posted something on Instagram but archived it because I wrote, my love is only for those who can face me with the truth. That is such a false statement and doesn’t describe my philosophy in any way. I act in love no matter what is going on outside of me or inside of someone else. Another person’s journey shouldn’t limit my ability to show love. I want to act in love no matter what.
My opinion is that love comes down to action. It’s not some theoretical abstract concept for me. It is knowing and understanding that we are all learning. We are all either acting out or healing from past wounds. We are all trying to survive and for some, survival requires a robotic lifestyle that doesn’t allow much thought. Let me make this clear, I absolutely do not belittle this behavior or mindset. I understand survival is innate and some of us are simply trying to live another day. I accept this. I listen. I use my own past mindset as a tool to empathize with the survival mindset. Loving unconditionally for me means showing acceptance to myself and others no matter where we are in life.
My desire to love unconditionally absolutely does not mean I will allow unhealed wounds to destroy my space. One of the most beautiful acts of love is stopping toxic behaviors. Whether that means loving myself enough to step away or owning up to and apologizing for a toxic behavior of my own. I understand why you are toxic. I understand that you are not ready to heal. I understand what you’re healing from regardless if you tell me with your words or actions. But what you are not going to do is manipulate me and treat me of little value. I will step away from manipulating words that have yet to be backed up with actions. You may choose to live that way and I can smile at you and hug you, but a line will be drawn once you attempt to limit me into submission. Not gunna happen.
The only way love can last a lifetime is if it’s unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love.
― Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare
I am going to continue learning to love myself and others unconditionally. How does it look to work on unconditional love?
1. working on my values so my character has something to fall in line with.
2. knowing and understanding myself
3. challenging my own limiting behaviors and beliefs
4. learning to value myself and my space
5. spending time alone
6. finding different ways to encourage myself
7. self-reflection
8. find ways to hold myself accountable
9. tell the truth
Doing these things for yourself is doing it for others. It helps after doing it for yourself because when you mindlessly limit yourself, you will unintentionally limit others. When you mindfully accept yourself, you mindfully accept others. These steps toward unconditional love listed above help you to bring your limiting beliefs and behaviors into a more concrete thinking space, or in other words, into awareness.
These actions are easy to suggest and write down but putting these into action is only a small piece of the hard part. When you begin to work towards unconditional love, it’s going to irritate the few who don’t feel they deserve it for themselves and they will automatically reflect that self-limiting belief on you, acting as if you also don’t deserve unconditional love. This is a lie. You deserve unconditional love for yourself.
Then there’s going to be a few who see your ability to love unconditionally and it will cause a ripple of acceptance, and what else has anybody ever wanted in their life?
The push and pull centered me
I’ve accepted me
I’ve loved me
Even in uncertainty
My arms are open to the things meant for me
My eyes are closed to keep my heart open
I will be
Ok
-Saschia
and why it’s important to know that.
There are things that should be handled directly. And then there are things like flirting, that have a casual build up. I think it’s ok to be indirect with a sweet smile when you’re flirting. Because most times it takes so many words in order to really process what a problem is. It takes a focused conversation. It takes patience. So, I like to think of flirting as an escape from needing to be articulate and that it just makes a suggestion in few simple words.
I might just like you, Ms. Johnson.
It’s vague, seductive, sends the point home, not articulate at all, but does its job. This is in my opinion an acceptable form of flirting. If you really Ms. Johnson, of course. If you don’t, well, that’s manipulating.
I grew up as a dreamer in a single-family home. I wasn’t that different from my peers. However, most TV shows depicted two parent families or co-parenting which involved parents that were separated but did whatever they had to do to make it work out. The sad thoughts that come with the idea that someone that should want you like they do on TV, starts young. It’s not an obvious thing. The TV parenting style sat in the back of my mind while the humor was in the forefront. But at bedtime right before I’d fall asleep, I’d wonder why no dad would fight that hard to be in my life. Why no man at that point would do anything to ensure that I grew up with a mom and a dad.
That’s a glimpse of where my abandonment issues began. Everyone has at least a small dose of abandonment issues in their blood because people leaving us high and dry is a part of life. Some may have lost a loved one from death, some from a heartbreak, or some from losing their best friends when they got into high school. Loss isn’t easy on anyone and it looks different for everyone.
Yes, sad sad, but I grew up and slowly began to understand
You’re the words I want to hear and the voice I seek in the darkness.
You’re the first person I think to call when I have good news
And the one I run to with my bad thoughts
I can’t help it
Separate lives, shared thoughts
Working together to create something
With nothing but the visions in our minds
Karl Marx and Consciousness
It is not the consciousness of man that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
Karl Marx
Do you think your status affects your consciousness, does your consciousness come from above, or somewhere between these two?
I read the quote above today and decided to share it with my Instagram family before I did my research. I wanted to know what people’s opinions were before I started digging in.
What does the quote mean?
Well, Karl Marx was a materialist who, unlike his teacher Hegel who was an idealist and believed in spiritual forces, [Marx] believed that consciousness came from social ranking. So, he believes that if you’re in a lower class that determines one form of consciousness verses being in the upper class which determines a different form of consciousness.
I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. — Joseph Campbell
I have spent far too long waiting for my life to finally begin.
We are going to die, and I refuse to live one more minute of my life keeping my mouth shut in order not to ruffle any feathers. If my mouth ruffles your feathers, get out of the way because this mouth isn’t going to close. I’m going to say exactly how I feel. I’m going to explain why I’m upset. I’m going to walk away from the things that try to make me smaller than I was when I woke up. I’m not hiding my voice anymore.
Joseph Campbell said,
I’m going to say yes to being alive. I’m going to dive headfirst out of a plane in the sky. I’m going to approach the tough topics no one else wants to talk about. I’m not just going to approach them I’m going to rip those topics out of everyone’s minds and place them front and center so they have nothing else to look at but the ugly truth.
Being alive for me means walking down as many paths as I can. Finding as many stories as I can. And bringing people along with me here and there for the ride. We’re here, on this flying rock together, but most of the searching is done alone. My only interests in life are for my own growth, to admire the growth of others, and to do it all with as much hard work and enjoyment at possible.
I sign off with words from the great Hunter Thompson,
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Ah here comes the depth
Here comes the midnight walks
In an empty field filled with ghosts
And blood and
Screams from so many past lives
I’ve been here too many times
To care much about the escape
I’ve come this time to dance
With the shadows
-Sasch