Insidious Adaptation

Seeing and feeling the hurt in one's eyes is a gift some say, an empath is what I have read, the ability to connect and feel what another person feels at a heightened level. This, something I have done since childhood, without awareness that other people don't naturally do this, or understand other people in that way. I can look back over the foundation of my own perspective in life and see that I was always adapting to what I perceived other people felt or wanted and therefore led me to being "liked" in many ways. The problem was and still is, is that people only like what is presented without actually liking me. The hardest thing one can do is to understand that other people think and perceive differently than they do. I was always influenced by why certain people did things, why they were able just to be, "cool," and it wasn't something I could just mimic. In high school, I had a friend named Eric, he was popular, and good at sports, and well, ju...

Is it not respectable to just “be” anymore? Must we continue to, “put ourselves out there,” or is that my competitive perspective of the environment kicking in again? Am I enough without the likes and reposts of another? Maybe not. Maybe I am being held down by the digital code I place all my value in, as though it means love, when it is barely recognition. Maybe I could be like an eagle, soaring high, a spirituality untouched, advanced by deeper understanding unexplainable in word form. Maybe I am supposed to be greater than the social media likes and the internet memes I cling too for attention. Maybe, just maybe, this is the devil’s way of reinforcing shame inside of me, and his way of keeping me worldly. After all, spending time on social media is considered worldly, even if you are just looking at Christian posts, you might not be able to skip past all the “booty” pictures, “cleavage shots” and other sexual innuendos that I too become guilty of repeating, laughing, or secretly ...