By B.D.

June 5, 2021

ON NOT ACQUIESCING TO SOCIAL PRESSURES

That is where we need to set our boundaries. If someone says they’re embarrassed, we tell them they shouldn’t be. Given time they’ll get over it as long as they don’t feel they’re being treated unfairly (i.e. if you’ll put a pair of shoes on for something/someone else but not just to appease them, then they’ll think that’s unfair). If they don’t adapt, then they’re simply not compatible with you, and that’s fine. Let them go. The world is big enough for us all to exist without compromising our lives for each other.

In general we cannot wait for other people to give us permission to be ourselves. It’s not for anyone else to give, and other people don’t know why we are who we are. So if we leave the choice up to them, they will make it for us based on their own preferences, not allowing for the fact that ours might be different, and they would correctly interpret that if we aren’t determined enough to decide for ourselves how to live our lives, then it can’t be that important to us.

If someone is a loved one then they love who you are, not who they think you ought to be. The same goes for yourself. If you are apologetic about going barefoot, whether to friends or to strangers, you will undermine your own self-confidence in other aspects as well, constantly doubting as to whether you are everyone else’s equal or not.

But getting past all of that is the most liberating and empowering feeling there is. Once you know that you are fully accepted and loved by those close to you then when anyone else challenges you who doesn’t know you well, you have the confidence to know that the problem is with that person who simply doesn’t know you, not with you. More importantly you know that the people you surrounded yourself with genuinely value you for who you are, and there is no better feeling than that.