My Actual Agenda
People don’t agree on much these days, in fact it often seems they go out of their way to disagree and engage in some sort of debate over whatever agenda they’ve chosen to be for the day. Odd wording perhaps, but in a culture where people can identify as an emoji and there’s even people who will teach you how to use the right pronouns if you identify as a bowl of soup, you can certainly identify as an agenda, and sadly, people do.
I’ve always said that I don’t have an agenda, but recently, I discovered I do. In fact I always have, and it’s directly tied into why I’ve always had trouble, even more so since the world went balls-to-the-wall woke. To be real, the trouble started long before the current woke trend, my unique perspective and relentlessness with the truth were such an issue for me when I was younger, I was frequently slapped across my smart mouth, or some such.
It seemed people either loved me or hated me, either way I accepted accountability, sometimes even for things that weren’t my fault, all to keep the peace. Thus, I have been in the habit since I was a child to perpetually try and be agreeable. For me, it was more than just making friends, I came up a ward of the state, moving from family to family, place to place, always starting over. Always trying to get the foster parents to like me enough to adopt me, always starting over in a new school as the “foster kid.” You have to be good at reading people.
I can’t credit anyone specific for my ability to see the objective truth, it’s likely just the fact that I had to, from a young age. As for my propensity to speak truth, regardless of the trouble it causes, I accept accountability for that. Also, for my tenacity in the face of people trying to tell me that their truth is more real than the objective truth. Unfortunately, I also blamed myself for far too long as the reason why the ones who I “rubbed the wrong way,” were rubbed wrong.
I tried to atone, I tried various methods for better communication. I would go days only speaking when spoken to. That was when I realized I interrupt more than I thought. I would also go days without speaking at all, that was when I realized how many words I wasted. Writing things down rather than speaking them streamlines communication and makes it easier to get to the point more effectively and efficiently.
With all the work put in, I couldn’t understand why some people still seemed put off. It took me longer than I would have liked before I realized that it wasn’t me, it was what I was saying, the truth. Speaking the truth combined with my insatiable desire to be a better person than I was a minute ago, not yesterday, was a combination for trouble for a lot of reasons. The most blaring of which was that I inadvertently set expectations just as high for others as I did for myself.
To demonstrate the combination of unapologetically telling the truth along with always trying to do the right thing, I offer this anecdote from when I lived in “transitional housing.” People there would sit and discuss the myriad ways in which they were raping the system for government checks and free meds. They assumed that since I was also poor, I obviously would see things the same way, I didn’t. I was unemployed and wouldn’t even sign up for food stamps because I wasn’t paying taxes.
I didn’t have a lot of friends at the “tiny housing village,” heavily populated with drunks, meth addicts and people faking mental illnesses for government money, taking it out of the pockets of those who actually need it. In fact, it sickened me and I said as much. It wasn’t a superiority complex, it was just, “you do what you do, I’ll do what I do,” yet I was relentlessly harassed while I lived there. People stole my food and left it out to rot, I was robbed and assaulted more than once.
Every night at the homeless village, walking back to my tiny unit, I half expected the man who threatened me daily with his hunting knife and glare, to be lying in wait to brutally murder me. Not for anything I did to him, but because what I said “made” him feel inferior. He once said to me, “You just go around thinking you’re better than everyone else!” I said, “Only the ones I’m better than.” I had never suggested that he fell into that category, but we both knew he did.
I don’t go around trying to be better than anyone but myself, like I said, every minute. Every word I speak, every action I take, I do the best I can to do it as the best version of myself I can be, and it isn’t easy. For me, it’s not just for Sundays, it’s all the time, it’s not just when people are watching or the camera is turned on. As difficult as it can be to constantly practice self-improvement, for me it’s as innate as breathing at this point.
That isn’t so much self-righteousness as it is self-empowerment and my favorite, truth. It hardly makes up for the years of self-inflicted bullying I put myself through, and I know I’m not alone in that. It’s at the point now where people are often afraid to give themselves credit even for the little things, at least if anyone’s looking, but we all secretly think we know, we have a special understanding of the ‘verse and if only everyone would just…
Truth is, we do know it all, we know everything about our corner of the world as we perceive it. Our environment, our people, our places. I’ve said for a long time that we all create our own truths and our integrity is measured by how close our truth is to the real thing. I’ve never stopped believing in the objective truth and never will. Watching current culture’s disconnection from it cements that commitment further.
So, connect again, see new places and meet new people, right? Current culture represents the exact opposite. Space is dictated, certain groups are allowed to invade the spaces of others and it’s condoned without a thought to the person whose original space is being invaded, often with hostility. Young people require “safe spaces,” were raised on them, and can’t function without them. Meanwhile, they demand the spaces of others and try to steal the experiences of others they can’t speak for.
People in general have lost the plot. They’re cramming themselves full of metaphorical discount Soylent Green and don’t even know it, they just know they want to be the one with the most of it.
All that being said, I do have an agenda, but it’s not politricks and it isn’t race or gender related, current cultures trifecta. Instead, it only has to do with wanting people to be the best that they can be or the best that I know they can be, even if they don’t know it themselves. Usually, if they figure it out they love me for it, if they don’t they resent me for it. If it’s social media, they censor me for it, but you only get there in truth.
It’s one thing to be censored for saying horrible things or making false accusations and threats. It’s quite another to be censored simply for telling the truth. In a culture where the term, “biological male” is considered “hate speech” it’s no wonder things are falling apart. We all live in Clownworld now, whether we like it or not. Line up and quietly wait for your opinions and thoughts to be assigned to you. And far too many do.
Kids raised on-screen have lost the ability to form thoughts of their own but will violently protect the ones that have been assigned to them. Meanwhile, there are adults who feel so disconnected in a world where twenty-five is considered “over the hill” they’re losing the plot as well and signing up for assigned ideologies. None of them see how foolish they look or hear how foolish they sound, so they mostly just yell and talk over people who present provable facts.
So, no, I don’t support politricks, I support people. Put simply, I don’t come from a place of enough privilege to pay attention to politricks, government or even trends. I do pay attention to the news though, all of it, from every side, and I don’t believe any of it. I like to see who makes sense, who is calm, who presents facts backed up with evidence rather than just opinions based on feelings. I take notes and if I feel so inclined, I dig deep.
No matter what I discover, my agenda is to encourage people to always do their best with the tools they have at any given time in the given circumstances, do that and you can do no wrong. Do that, and you’re Golden.
So, to clear things up for people who are quick to make ASSumptions about myself and others who don’t have our ideas spoon-fed to us, STOP. Stop putting the “mental” into judgmental, stop making erroneous ASSumptions about people. And for goodness sake, social media platforms, please STOP having bots scan for harmless words like, “biological” and flagging them as “hateful.” Don’t be afraid to think for yourself, or let’s start small so you can handle it and just start by thinking.
To be clear:
1. I believe biological men are men and biological women are women, that doesn’t make me a “TERF.”
2. I support actual trans people whole-heartedly.
3. I am a biological woman, that does NOT make me a “chest-feeder,” “cis,” or a “breeder,” or any other of their labels, it makes me a real woman and I’ll never be afraid to say that even though they want to imprison me for it. (And they have the audacity to claim they aren’t allowed to be who they are.)
4. I believe ALL lives matter, that doesn’t make me a racist, it makes me a fan of the living. Even if the life they live is sad and filled with hate, that’s their limitation, I will not allow it to become mine.
So PLEASE, keep your silly, childish name-calling, or labeling, to yourselves. Unless you’re willing to judge yourself just as harshly stow it, because I guarantee, you ought not be casting so many stones around from that glass house of privilege you’re living in, it will come crashing down.