When I look back on my life, I can no longer recognize myself. How did I get to this point—it must’ve been a slow process—the surrender of my dignity.

One day you wake up and you no longer have an identity, you’re now a number; a statistic; a shadow that real people just ignore as they pass you by.

When I started on this journey, I never imagined, that I would’ve ended up as an outsider, disenfranchised because of my lack of social graces.

You know what’s funny—to get to this point gradually—thinking all along that it’s not so extreme—only to find out in the end—that the joke is being played on you.

By: ElRoyPoet, 2022

“When I was young, I would always wake up believing, I was going to have a wonderful life. I never dreamed I was going to have a second life, the one of a minority, a loser that society hated, and that only predators would want me, but only if I allowed them to exploit me.” By: Anonymous

Commentary: There’s a universal belief that success and self-worth are nearly identical and if you’re rich you must be either be smart or hardworking. But if you’re poor you must’ve messed up somewhere along the way. People like to believe that they’ve gotten to where they are, because they’re talented or have earned it. That could be true to some extent, but it’s also a fact, that there are people who could have been equally smart or talented and not in that position, because of the barriers that were erected to impede them. It’s hard to sit with the idea, that maybe somebody else deserves to be where they are, more than they do. I think almost everybody, wants to be able to tell a story of making it on their own. However, does that give them the right to hate the less fortunate?

Read article about lessons to learn from the pandemic

“Since it’s often impossible to get a reasonable sense of what will happen in the future, it’s unfair to blame people with good intentions who end up worse off as a result of unforeseen circumstances. This leads to the conclusion that compassion, not blame, is the appropriate attitude towards those who act in good faith but whose bets in life don’t pay off…Despair thrives where empathy is missing; right now, our lack of compassion for one another is killing us…No matter how smart we think we are, there’s a hard limit on what we can know, and we could easily end up on the losing end of a big bet. We owe it to ourselves, and others, to build a more compassionate world.” Excerpt from The mathematical case against blaming people for their misfortune

“You’re probably familiar with Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ theory, but did you know he also authored a ‘sympathy hypothesis?’ He observed that it took sympathy—what we now call compassion—to raise children, create flourishing communities and turn the human race into the civilization we know today.
Empathy and compassion are both integral parts of the human condition, passed down through evolution to help us survive. Observing suffering activates the parts of our brain associated with threat detection and nurturing. It also affects the vagus nerve, which controls the heart and lungs, and the reward centers of the brain. Performing acts of kindness actually give us ‘hits’ of pleasure chemicals.” Excerpt from: A guide to empathy and compassion

“And I will come near you for judgment; I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against perjurers, against those who oppress wage earners and widows and orphans, and against those who turn away an alien, because they do not fear ME,” Says the LORD who rules over all.” Bible, Malachi 3:5