SCMC Devotional, December 22, 2017
Some of the most incredible people I know voted for Donald Trump, and some of the most incredible people I know voted for Hillary Clinton. The people that I know that voted for Trump are not racist, misogynistic, or hateful, and the people that voted for Hillary Clinton are not hateful and intolerable. If you are someone who woke up this morning and is going to start seeing people as who they voted for, and not as the person you have always known them to be, then you are what is wrong with America. I will never think any less of any person who has different views than me, because some of the most beautiful, inspirational people I know will disagree with what I believe all day long, but at the end of the day they are still that beautiful inspirational person I have always known them as. Don’t think less of people because some of their beliefs don’t align with yours, and don’t lose quality people in your life because you choose hate over love.
Tips for Enduring Unrighteous Dominion
Anyone who has done anything consequential—whether good, bad, ugly, or worse—has been criticized. Sometimes for things they deserved to be and sometimes not. Everyone from Mother Teresa to Winston Churchill has had to face, and face down, opposition in the public, the press, and even among the people closest to them. They’ve had their names dragged through the mud, their motives questioned, their methods scrutinized.
And yet, all of these people found ways through the noise. They found ways to manage their reactions and responses, to discipline themselves to continue to press on.
We talk about thick skin. Marcus Aurelius called it “tranquility.” It was, as he put it, “The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do.”
That’s what we can control: what you do. You can’t control what they think, say, criticize you for, call you out on, or look down on.
So if you take heat today—deservedly or not—just remember it doesn’t matter what they say (you choose whether you care about that or not). It only matters what you do.
– Daily Stoic
Recent Comments