The meme has been screenshotted so many times, the original author and attribution long ago cropped away.
But it still had enough resolution to really gutpunch me when I saw it.
Can’t express how stress free being open minded is.
Some lesbians use he/him? Oh cool.
Some people have people inside their head, and sometimes it’s fictional chars? Sick, your brain’s like a pirate ship they’re all working to run.
Some people like being treated like a pet dog? Bark bark bro.
Being fat isn’t unhealthy, but a perfectly normal type of body to have? Kinda beautiful how different we can all be.
Something doesn’t make any sense? Cool, an opportunity to learn. And even if I can’t figure it out, it’s cool, we still have mysteries today.
It’s just… idk, man. People are weird. Being a person is weird. Society is weird. The universe is weird. Rather than having to "normalize" everything, just accept that some people are weird. So are you. Nothing is normal, the rules are all made up. I once saw a Klingon pushing a baby stroller down the street in Toronto. The world is a weird place, man. Just roll with it.
It’s even more powerful when you realize that’s only half the benefit.
The meme is focused on how somebody treats others. But it’s also about how you treat yourself.
At least some of that judgment has to be rooted in shame. Shame about not being "correct", shame of being "wrong" or "different".
Or, as we’ve seen in recent days, shame about even being called wierd
I keep running into people who apologize for facets of themselves. They apologize for laughing, for their love of a particular topic, their taste in music, their anxiety, the way they dress, their size, or even for the size of their vocabulary.
They have all experienced that kind of judgment at the hands of other people, sure.
But now they’re not only being judged, but they’re also the person pre-emptively judging themselves for just being authentically themselves.
And damn, it’s exhausting to even imagine living that way, carrying around that much shame and self-hatred.
You could even say that it’s weird.