In A Cold World, Keep Yourself Warm by Enyjé Sandoz

The world is (seemingly) so mean and callous because the masses want to walk around cold and emotionally detached under the guise of self-protection and self-preservation.

To acknowledge emotions has come to be deemed weak, a means of absolving behavior, but emotions are not why something has happened; they are a response to it.

We are human—not robots or non-living creatures, we are meant to feel: the good, the painful, the uncomfortable, and the calm.

Everyone wants to walk around as if they are immune to emotions, when really, their emotions are just festering inside of them like toxic waste.

The continuation suppression and repression of emotions is inwardly volatile due to the lack of expression; as a result, it starts eating away at them.

First, with their empathy. If they cannot stand their own emotions, how can they consider another’s?

Then, it eats away at their perception of reality. Suddenly, everyone is mean, cruel, and out to get them; they become reactive—set out to get others before they can get got.

After that, being reactive eventually becomes exhausting because it’s a battle every waking moment; so, their solution?

Shut down, completely.

In shutting down, they are not always isolated from society, so they are going out into the world emotionless and impacting others.

And it’s just this cycle. With each person impacted, they infect the next, and then the next, and the next—emotional contagion is very real!

Before you know it, the world seems to be filled with these sorts of people (mean, hateful, spiteful, vengeful, evil), and then everyone is wondering why.

Now, where there’s human, there’s flaw and foul. So, that’s not to say there aren’t cruel people who (I believe) exist (it is still determined if morality is determined at birth—I argue, for some, it is), and have been this way since… forever.

In reality, though, the world is still filled with the sweetest, kindest, most loving, adoring, and endearing people who just naturally emanate this energy because it’s their embodied, authentic expression, not a mask to hide and seem socially acceptable.

I won’t say these people are an anomaly because they are not.

It is a matter of the world being so consumed with negativity that societal norms have ingrained a negativity bias (solely focusing on negative aspects of something), which leads to confirmation bias—people think the world is cruel, they have a bad experience, and that’s their proof of the current state of the world.

Funny enough, it is rarely an assumption that the world and people are good when something positive happens. Instead, it is deemed a miracle of sorts.

Yes, horrible things happen in the world; there are unscrupulous people—again, where there’s human, there’s flaw and foul. However, to cast that judgment on the world, that’s just not reality—it’s a reality, but not THEE reality.

Not to sound like Hannah Montana, but life is truly what you make it.

It won’t be perfect. You may get hurt—doesn’t mean you have to tolerate and endure, but it’s not a reason to go cold. But, life is equally as beautiful, and the beauty is not always determined by worldly things (don’t get me wrong, it can); it can be something as simple as a stranger smiling at you, the way trees sway in the wind, the sounds of birds chirping in the morning, or the way through mid-day sun beams—-beautiful is everywhere: in our environmental surroundings and in the hearts of the people around us.

Not to sound early 2000s cliché, but also:

BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD.

This does not mean you have to make it your life’s mission to change the world and bear the burden of society, but be a ripple in the water to create movement. Things on the surface may not seem to be moving—that’s okay, and that’s not your responsibility, but that does not mean things beneath the surface aren’t.

Additionally, consider the quality of life you want. I am not talking about lifestyle, but rather how you feel the moment you open your eyes and the moment you close them to rest.

What do you want your inner baseline to feel like? Meaning, no matter what goes on in life and what emotional direction you are pulled in, when you return to center, what do you want that to feel like?

Don’t assimilate and adapt to the icky, ugly vibes.

Maintain who you are, adjust accordingly, always come back to center, and restructure—if need be, but don’t take on others’ ways.

Not to be crass, but: if you view these people as ‘fucked up individuals’, why would you adapt to their ways, inadvertently becoming a ‘fucked up individual’ yourself?

Just something to think about in the ‘matching one’s energy’ ways of the world.