“Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live. Do not try to change people; they are only messengers telling you who you are. Revalue yourself and they will confirm the change.” ― Neville Goddard

Since 2018, my life has changed an awful lot. In fact, more me making changes with and for myself, rather than the world changing around me.

CHANGE THROUGH RECOVERY

When I had a breakdown in the new year of 2018, I had no choice but to make changes. I started taking medication to help with the anxiety I experience. I started taking more time for myself, doing yoga in the mornings in the room where I could see the morning light and the trees outside. Surrounded by pretty things that made me happy. Nature, a journal with flowers on it. Lavender scents. You get the idea.

Even now, two years later, recovery is a long and gradual road. I still have anxiety. I always will. I still have days when I just want to hide under the covers, though they’re nowhere near as often as they once were. With the pandemic, I’m staying home for the most part, unless it’s somewhere I need to go, like the shops or the pharmacy, so getting around like I usually did makes me more anxious than it once did, but I manage it, if poorly sometimes. But like everything, we have to take each day at a time.

UNLIKELY CHANGES HELPING THROUGH THE BIG CHANGES

The pandemic is tough for all of us. If it’s not restrictions, it’s worrying about ourselves and our families, or having lost someone. I recently learned that a distant cousin through marriage passed away, from COVID19, before his time. I never knew him, but that doesn’t matter. He was family and his wife is now without her husband. The virus is very real and should not be approached in a blase manner, as unfortunately I see so many taking, particularly in the USA and the UK, where I live. So, changes on my part have to be made.

On a lighter note, I know I have adapted to these changes by using what I have done before, to keep my spirits up. Reading, writing when my brain feels it can (pandemic brain fog is a thing). Other changes I’ve made in the past have helped in unlikely ways as well.

For example, my transitioning to try and be more eco-friendly. Not feeling the need to buy unnecessary items I don’t need and investing in reusable products (I know this isn’t accessible or right for everyone, so no judgement) have definitely helped in this time.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much of a relief its been not having to rush out to the shop to buy pads and tampons when there were shortages and panic buying. My cloth pads and menstrual cup have been a massive stress reliever in that department, both for the planet and a pandemic we never saw coming when I bought them.

CHANGE THROUGH FAITH

Along this time, I’ve also reconnected more with my faith. Even when I wasn’t much of a theist, I always found Bible verses, like Psalm 91, particularly calming. While I’m by no means a ‘Bible-thumper’ and never will be, (I’m more of a ‘in my own way’ approach to my personal faith) recently it’s been something I’ve been turning to more, to calm, centre myself and try to be the best person I can. God is love and all that.

I do question my faith, particularly in such trying times, and particularly with such polarisation happening in the world right now. So I turn to what one of the few things I can: praying. I don’t know if it’ll work, praying for everyone and the world, but I suppose it’s a more appealing option than going into a full blown panic.

As far as people being ‘messengers telling you who you are’ in the above quote, I think it can be a bit of both. The old saying: ‘People who come into your life can be a blessing or a lesson.’ springs to mind. Change is inevitable and at times very necessary. When it comes to seeing such hatred and ignorance in the world, that obviously needs to change. I’m trying my best not to use the word ‘hate’ for trivial things, like ‘I hate cabbage’ or ‘I hate this music’. I don’t ‘hate’ it, not really. I just don’t like it. Hate is such a strong word and we have so much in the world already.

PRAY FOR YOUR ENEMIES?

I understand this approach isn’t for everyone, nor am I trying to tout myself as ‘look at me, aren’t I amazing?’ because that’s definitely not the case. Here, I’m just talking about my own way that I deal with this, both in faith and for the sake of my own sanity and stress levels:

I don’t want to hate the people in the world that hate me for being who I am.

Put it this way, I’m a bisexual woman who is a sex blogger. Just the first two is enough to send some into a spiral of how much they wish I didn’t exist, and all the awful things they want to do. How I’m apparently wrong, a bitch, a whore, a slut, and whatever other insults they feel they have to throw.

I can’t say I like them by any means, far from it in fact. But I don’t want to hate them, even if I really, really feel it. That doesn’t mean I have to be all nice and passive either, because I have just as much right to stand up for myself, and for others, as anyone else.

But I don’t want to hate. If there’s one thing I utterly loathe and hate, it is, well… hate. There’s few people in this world I actually, truly despise (one of whom I’m sure you can imagine) but I try my best to not hate when I could be focusing my time and energy on love, helping others, trying to act by example and whatnot. That’s what I aspire, but I’m only human, and I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I’m not excusing anything at all, but I don’t want to fight fire with fire. I want to put the fire out.

Aside from the verse in the infamous Sermon on the Mount, about praying for your enemies and those who persecute you, it’s my realising that hatred feeds off more hate. It gets off on it, it’s its own life force, like fuel to a fire. And I simply refuse to give it that satisfaction, as difficult as it may be. Hate is a sadistic and cruel master, and I refuse to play its game.

I want to try and open up a dialogue, try and have a conversation, reach out to their empathy if it’s there, their humanity. Get them to imagine what it’s like in the shoes of the very people or situation they are so full of this horridness for. A lot of the time, sadly, it falls on deaf ears. We can speak until we’re blue in the face, but they don’t want to listen. Bitterness is more comfortable than recognising other human beings are just that. Human beings. I see that a lot right now, particularly online. It makes me sad and angry, despairing at people even, not using those words lightly. Hatred is truly a horrible thing.

Yet sometimes, I’ve seen these appeals work. I’ve seen these discussions, an event, or personal circumstance even, see people do complete 180s, going from utterly hateful of anyone who isn’t them or like them, to being one of their loudest supporters and advocates for equal rights. That restores my faith in humanity, what little of it I feel right now. It doesn’t excuse past actions by any means, but it gives me faith that for those that got showed a way into hatred, that there might be a way out, surely? I feel like I’m grasping at straws sometimes when I ask this.

Recently that’s my biggest change. Right now, that’s my counter for lowering myself to hate’s level. It’s my way of trying to take a high ground over it that I see in the news, online and in the world, as well as tackling it head on. Fighting it where I see it and trying to starve that fire of the oxygen it needs to spread like a parasite.

I pray for peace, that those who are hateful can see differently and change. I pray for things to get better, the pandemic to end, for my family, friends, etc. I pray for a lot of things, but that’s that’s the main recurring theme:

Change.

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*Image – decopurdapic