Choose your battles well

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Choose your battles well, since battle on you must

There are battles built on strife and battles built on trust

Will you battle to conform to social expectations

To find significance in ideas and systems that promise validation

To carefully behave in ways that you think will protect you from

the wounds and judgments that remain buried in your subconscious

Will you fight to conceal the parts of your humanity that invite scorn and disapproval from yourself, if not others?

Will you struggle to be nice, offering your silent smile as a poor excuse for compassion

Putting away truth and honesty as if they were sharp knives too dangerous to be handled

Assuming we know what others can handle. Reinforcing the paternalism around us keeping us bound and restrained like infants in a playpen who need to be protected for our own sakes.

Is this, is this what you will fight for.

Or…

Will you battle to find your center, your true self

Will you courageously embrace your humanity and divinity

Will you cease stuffing and hiding, blame shifting and escaping

Will you boldly go where no one has gone before into the terrifying silence of your unprotected self

Will you be a player in someone else’s game or a co-creator of a better reality in a real living, breathing universe

Will you defy empire and champion community, measuring success by the least and the weakest

Will you battle from the ground up rather than the top down, toes planted in moist rich earth, soiled hand joined to soiled hand, cheered on, energized by all our relatives of creation seen and unseen

Choose your battles well, since battle on you must

There are battles built on strife and battles built on trust