Category: Motivational Page 1 of 2

There Are No True Monsters

On November 3, 2023

As a child we often fear that the world is filled with monsters, creatures that want to hurt us for no reason other than because they want to. As we grow older, the monsters in the dark, under our bed, or in the basement are proven to be imaginary, but we encounter apparent real world monsters in the form of scary animals and, most often, people who don’t have our best interests at heart.

That being said, the truth is that these apparent monsters, upon closer inspection, aren’t the same thing as what we previously feared, not because they aren’t dangerous, but because they tend to hide complicated motivations other than mere malice.

The tiger that our prehistoric ancestors feared, wasn’t attacking them out of pure malice, but rather because it either saw an opportunity for meat it could eat to survive, or it was afraid of our pointy sticks and struck first. Most real world villains are merely selfish humans who’s moral circle consists only of themselves, or worse, those that are blinded by some ideological aspirations to sacrifice others for some so-called greater good. In both cases what they do can be monstrous, but in the simple sense, they are human beings, rather than true monsters.

But what about sadists, you might counter. What about those that gain enjoyment from the suffering of others? Clearly these are monsters right? Well, to be fair, they didn’t choose to be what they are. Some perverse environmental factors incentivized their sadism by connecting their pleasure to the suffering of others. In truth, they just want to feel pleasure, and their sadism is a means to that end. It’s definitely a screwed up thing, but it isn’t the same thing as being a monster who wants to hurt you for no reason.

So, in truth, there are no true monsters. Everyone has some motivation that complicates the matter. No one is born inherently evil. They can become essentially evil through their choices, commit acts of malice out of hatred or revenge, but these are all motivations that stem from a failure to empathize with other beings.

In theory, it might be possible to show such people the error of their ways. Ideally, that should be how you deal with them. Their darkness stems from ignorance rather than malice after all. But the difficulty is that those who are prone to such thoughts and beliefs are also likely to be more dangerous. You may not have the luxury of debating them on ideas, when they’re trying to kill you for whatever reasons.

So sometimes we have to fight. Sometimes we have to punish and deter. But we should do so with the awareness that the people we strike against are still human beings, sentient creatures that can love and feel happiness and suffering as well.

There may not be true monsters in the world, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t dangers. We should respect that as much as we may want to redeem others, it may not be realistically possible, when they are too fargone into madness, or too closed minded to see beyond their selfish impulses.

When we can, we should empathize and show mercy, lest we become what we fear and disdain. When we cannot, we must understand this is a prudent compromise with reality, one that we choose begrudgingly rather than gleefully. Everyone is a hero in their own story. We should be aware how we can, while fighting for what we value, become villains in the stories of others.

On The Morality Of Work

by Josephius

On May 17, 2023

In Motivational, Philosophy, Politics

If you accept the idea that there is no ethical consumption or production under capitalism, a serious question arises: Should you work?

What does it mean to work? Generally, the average person is a wage earner. They sell their labour to an employer in order to afford food to survive. To work thus means to engage with the system, to be a part of society and contribute something that someone somewhere wants done in exchange for the means of survival.

Implicit in this is the reality that there is a fundamental, basic cost to living. Someone, somewhere, is farming the food that you eat, and in a very roundabout way, you are, by participating in the economy, returning the favour. This is ignoring the whole issue of capitalism’s merits. At the end of the day, the economy is a system that feeds and clothes and provides shelter, how ever imperfectly and unfairly. Even if it is not necessarily the most just and perfect system, it nevertheless does provide for most people the amenities that allow a good life.

Thus, in an abstract sense, work is fair. It is fair that the time spent by people to provide food and clothing and shelter is paid back by your spending your time to earn a living, regardless of whatever form that takes. On a basic level, it’s at least minimally fair that you exchange your time and energy for other people’s time and energy. Capitalism may not be fair, but the basic idea of social production is right.

So, if you are able to, please work. Work because in an ideal society, work is your contribution to some common good. It is you adding to the overall utility by doing something that seems needed by someone enough that they’ll pay you for it. Even if in practice, the reality of the system is less than ideal, the fact is that on a basic level, work needs to be done by someone somewhere for people to live.

While you work, try to do so as morally as possible, by choosing insofar as it is possible the professions that are productive and useful to society, and making decisions that reflect your values rather than that of the bottom line. If you must participate in capitalism to survive, then at least try to be humane about it.

In Defence of Defiance Against The World’s Ills

by Josephius

On May 16, 2023

In Motivational, Philosophy, Politics

“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” – Jesus

In 1972, the famous Utilitarian moral philosopher Peter Singer published an essay titled: “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” that argued that we have a moral duty to help those in poverty far across the world. In doing so, he echoed a sentiment that Jesus shared almost two millennia prior, yet which most people who call themselves Christians today seem relatively unconcerned with.

From a deeply moral perspective, we live in a world that is fundamentally flawed and unjust. The painful truth is that the vast majority of humans on this Earth live according to a kind of survivorship bias, where the systems and beliefs that perpetuate are not right, but what enables them to survive long enough to procreate and instill a next generation where things continue to exist.

For most people, life is hard enough that questioning whether the way things are is right is something of a privilege that they cannot afford. For others, this questioning requires a kind of soul searching that they shy away from because it would make them uncomfortable to even consider. It’s natural to imagine yourself the hero in your own story. To question this assumption is not easy.

But the reality is that most all of us are in some sense complicit in the most senseless of crimes against humanity. When we participate in an economy to ensure we have food to eat, we are tacitly choosing to give permission to a system of relations that is fundamentally indifferent to the suffering of many. We compete with fellow human beings for jobs and benefit from their misery when we take one of only a limited number of spots in the workforce. We chose to allow those with disproportionate power to decide who gets to live a happier life. And those in power act to further increase their share of power, because to do anything else would lead to being outcompeted and their organization rendered extinct by the perverse incentives that dominate the system.

Given all this, what can one even begin to do about it? Most of us are not born into a position where they have the power to change the world. Our options are limited. To be moral, we would need to defy the very nature of existence. What can we do? If we sell everything we have and give to the poor, that still won’t change the nature of the world, even if it’s the most we could conceivably do.

What does it mean to defy destiny? What does it look like to try to achieve something that seems impossible?

What exists in opposition to this evil? What is good? What is right? What does it look like to live a pure and just life in a world filled with indifference and malice? What does it mean to take responsibility for one’s actions and the consequences of those actions?

Ultimately, it is not in our power to single-handledly change the world, but there are steps we can take to give voice to our values, to live according to what we believe to be right. This means making small choices about how we behave towards others. It means showing kindness and consideration in a world that demands cutthroat competition. It means taking actions that bring light into the world.

Even if we, by ourselves, cannot bring revolution, we can at least act according to the ideals we espouse. This can be as small as donating a modest amount to a charity in a far off land that corrects a small amount of injustice by giving the poorest among us a bednet that protects them from malaria. If approximately ~~$4800~~ $6500 worth of such things can save a life, and minimum wage can earn you $32,000 a year, if you modestly donate 10% of that to this charity, you can save about ~~three lives~~ one life every two years. If you work for 40 years, you can save ~~about 60~~ almost 20 lives this way. Those lives matter. They will be etched into eternity, like all lives worth living. (Edit: Corrected some numbers.)

Admittedly, to do this requires participating in the system. You could also choose not to participate. But to do so would abandon your responsibilities for the sake of a kind of moral purity. In the end, you can do more good by living an ethical life, to lead by example and showing that there are ways of living where you strive to move beyond selfish competition, and seek to cooperate and build up the world.

This is the path of true defiance. It does not surrender one’s life to the evils of egoism, or abandon the world to the lost. Instead it seeks to build something better through decisions made that go against the grain. With the understanding that we are all living a mutual co-existence, and that our choices and decisions reflect who we are, our character as people.

We do not have to be perfect. It is enough to be good.

Practical Utilitarianism Cares About Relationships

by Josephius

On January 5, 2023

In Motivational, Philosophy

Anyone reading my writings probably knows that I subscribe roughly to the moral theory of Utilitarianism. To me, we should be trying to maximize the happiness of everyone. Every sentient being should be considered important enough to be weighed in our moral calculus of right and wrong. In theory, this should mean we should place equal weight on every human being on this Earth. In practice however, there are considerations that need to be taken into account that complicate the picture.

Effective Altruism would argue that time and distance don’t matter, that you should help those who you can most effectively assist given limited resources. This usually leads to the recommendation of donating to charities in Africa for bednet or medication delivery as this is considered the most effective use of a given dollar of value. There is definitely merit to the argument that a dollar can go further in poverty-stricken Africa than elsewhere. However, I don’t think that’s the only consideration here.

Time and distance do matter to the extent that we as human beings have limited knowledge of things far away from us in time and space. With respect to donations to a distant country in dire need, there are reasonable uncertainties about the effectiveness of these donations, as many of the arguments in favour of them depend heavily on our trust of the analysis done by the charities working far away, that we cannot confirm or prove directly.

This uncertainty should function as a kind of discount rate on the value of the help we can give. A more nuanced and measured analysis thus suggests that we should both donate some of our resources to those distant charities, but that we should also devote some of our resources to those closer to home whom we can directly see and assist and know that we are able to help. Our friends and family, whom we have relationships that allow us to know their needs and wants, what will best help them, are obvious candidates for this kind of help.

Similarly, those in the distant future, while worth helping to an extent, should not completely absolve us of our responsibilities to those near to us in time, who we are much more certain we can directly help and affect in meaningful ways. The further away a possible being is in time, the more uncertain is their existence, after all.

This also means that we ourselves should value our own happiness and, being the best positioned to know how we ourselves can be happy, should take responsibility for our own happiness.

Thus, in practice, Utilitarianism, carefully considered, does not eliminate our social responsibilities to those around us, but rather reinforces these ties, as being important to understanding how best to make those around us happy.

Equal concern does not mean, in practice, equal duty. It means instead that we should expand our circle of concern to the entire universe, and that there is a balance of considerations that create responsibilities for us, magnified by our practical ability to know and help.

Those distant from us are still important. We should do what we reasonably can to help them. But those close to us put us in a position where we are uniquely responsible for what we know to be true.

In the end, it’s ultimately up to you to decide what matters to you, but may I suggest that you be open to helping both those close and far from you, whose needs you are aware of to varying degrees, and who deserve to be happy just like you.

A Heuristic For Future Prediction

by Josephius

On January 5, 2023

In Motivational, Rationality

In my experience, the most reliable predictive heuristic that you can use in daily life is something called Regression Towards The Mean. Basically, given that most relevant life events are a result of mixture of skill and luck, there is a tendency for events that are very positive to be followed by more negative events, and for very negative events to be followed by more positive events. This is a statistical tendency that occurs over many events, and so not every good event will be immediately followed by a bad one, but over time, the trend tends towards a consistent average level rather than things being all good or all bad.

Another way to word this is to say that we should expect the average rather than the best or worst case scenarios to occur most of the time. To hope for the best or fear the worst are both, in this sense, unrealistic. The silver lining in here is that while our brightest hopes may well be dashed, our worst fears are also unlikely to come to pass. When things seem great, chances are things aren’t going to continue to be exceptional forever, but at the same time, when things seem particularly down, you can expect things to get better.

This heuristic tends to work in a lot of places, ranging from overperforming athletes suffering a sophmore jinx, to underachievers having a Cinderella story. In practice, these events simply reflect Regression Towards The Mean.

Over much longer periods of time, this oscillation tends to curve gradually upward. This is a result of Survivorship Bias. Things that don’t improve tend to stop existing after a while, so the only things that perpetuate in the universe tend to be things that make progress and improve in quality over time. The stock market is a crude example of this. The daily fluctuations tend to regress towards the mean, but the overall long term trend is one of gradual but inevitable growth.

Thus, even with Regression Towards The Mean, there is a bias towards progress that in the long run, entails optimism about the future. We are a part of life, and life grows ever forward. Sentient beings seek happiness and avoid suffering and act in ways that work to create a world state that fulfills our desires. Given, there is much that is outside of our control, but that there are things we can influence means that we can gradually, eventually, move towards the state of reality that we want to exist.

Even if by default we feel negative experiences more strongly than positive ones, our ability to take action allows us to change the ratio of positive to negative in favour of the positive. So the long term trend is towards good, even if the balance of things tends in the short run towards the average.

These dynamics mean that while the details may be unknowable, we can roughly predict the valence of the future, and as a heuristic, expecting things to be closer to average, with a slight bias towards better in the long run, tends to be a reliable prediction for most phenomena.

The Darkness And The Light

by Josephius

On January 3, 2023

In Motivational, Philosophy, Rationality

Sometimes you’re not feeling well. Sometimes the world seems dark. The way world is seems wrong somehow. This is normal. It is a fundamental flaw in the universe, in that it is impossible to always be satisfied with the reality we live in. It comes from the reality of multiple subjects experiencing a shared reality.

If you were truly alone in the universe, it could be catered to your every whim. But as soon as there are two it immediately becomes possible for goals and desires to misalign. This is a structural problem. If you don’t want to be alone, you must accept that other beings have values that can potentially be different than yours, and who can act in ways contrary to your expectations.

The solution is, put simply, to find the common thread that allows us to cooperate rather than compete. The alternative is to end the existence of all other beings in the multiverse, which is not realistic nor moral. All of the world’s most pressing conflicts are a result of misalignment between subjects who experience reality from different angles of perception.

But the interesting thing is that there are Schelling points, focal points where divergent people can converge on to find common ground and at least partially align in values and interests. Of historical interest, the idea of God is one such point. Regardless of the actual existence of God, the fact of the matter is that the perspective of an all-knowing, all-benevolent, impartial observer is something that multiple religions and philosophies have converged on, allowing a sort of cooperation in the form of some agreement over the Will of God and the common ideas that emerge from considering it.

Another similar Schelling point is the Tit-For-Tat strategy for the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game in Game Theory. The strategy is one of opening with cooperate, then mirroring others and cooperating when cooperated with, and defecting in retaliation for defection, while offering immediate and complete forgiveness for future cooperation. Surprisingly, this extremely simple strategy wins tournaments and has echoes in various religions and philosophies as well. Morality is superrational.

Note however that this strategy depends heavily on repeated interactions between players. If one player is in such a dominant position as to be able to kill the other player by defecting, the strategy is less effective. In practice, Tit-For-Tat works best against close to equally powerful individuals, or when those individuals are part of groups that can retaliate even if the individual dies.

In situations of relative darkness, when people or groups are alone and vulnerable to predators killing in secret, the cooperative strategies are weaker than the more competitive strategies. In situations of relative light, when people are strong enough to survive a first strike, or there are others able to see such first strikes and retaliate accordingly, the cooperative strategies win out.

Thus, early history, with its isolated pockets of humanity facing survival or annihilation on a regular basis, was a period of darkness. As the population grows and becomes more interconnected, the world increasingly transitions into a period of light. The future, with the stars and space where everything is visible to everyone, is dominated by the light.

In the long run, cooperative societies will defeat competitive ones. In the grand scheme of things, Alliances beat Empires. However, in order for this state equilibrium to be reached, certain inevitable but not immediately apparent conditions must first be met. The reason why the world is so messed up, why it seems like competition beats cooperation right now, is that the critical mass required for there to be light has not yet been reached.

We are in the growing pains between stages of history. Darkness was dominant for so long that continues to echo into our present. The Light is nascent. It is beginning to reshape the world. But it is still in the process of emerging from the shadows of the past. But in the long run, the Light will rise and usher in the next age of life.

Perplexity

by Josephius

On December 20, 2022

In Motivational, Rationality

It is the nature of reality that things are complicated. People are complicated. The things we assume to be true, may or may not be, and an honest person recognizes that the doubts are real. The uncertainty of truth means that no matter how strongly we strive for it, we can very much be wrong about many things. In fact, given that most matters have many possibilities, the base likelihood of getting things right is about 1/N, where N is the number of possibilities that the matter can have. As possibilities increase, our likelihood of being correct diminishes.

Thus, humility as a default position is wise. We are, on average, less than 50% likely to have accurate beliefs about the world. Most of the things we believe at any given time are probably wrong, or at least, not the exact truth. In that sense, Socrates was right.

That being said, it remains important to take reasonable actions given our rational beliefs. It is only by exploring reality and testing our beliefs that we can become more accurate and exceed the base probabilities. This process is difficult and fraught with peril. Our general tendency is to seek to reinforce our biases, rather than to seek truths that challenge them. If we seek to understand, we must be willing to let go of our biases and face difficult realities.

The world is complex. Most people are struggling just to survive. They don’t have the luxury to ask questions about right and wrong. To ask them to see the error of their ways is often tantamount to asking them to starve. The problem is not people themselves, but the system that was formed by history. The system is not a conscious being. It is merely a set of artifices that people built in their desperation to survive in a world largely indifferent to their suffering and happiness. This structure now stands and allows most people to survive, and sometimes to thrive, but it is optimized for basic survival rather than fairness.

A fair world is desirable, but ultimately one that is extraordinarily difficult to create. It’s a mistake to think that people were disingenuous when they tried, in the past, to create a better world for all. It seems they tried and failed, not for lack of intention, but because the challenge is far greater than imagined. Society is a complex thing. People’s motivations are varied and innumerable. Humans make mistakes with the best of intentions.

To move forward requires taking a step in the right direction. But how do we know what direction to take? It is at best an educated guess with our best intuitions and thoughts. But the truth is we can never be certain that what we do is best. The universe is like an imperfect information game. The unknowns prevent us from making the right move all the time in retrospect. We can only choose what seems like the best action at a given moment.

This uncertainty limits the power of all agents in the universe who lack the clarity of omniscience. It is thus, an error to assign God-like powers to an AGI for instance. But more importantly, it means that we should be cautious of our own confidence. What we know is very little. Anyone who says otherwise should be suspect.

The True Nature of Reality

by Josephius

On October 12, 2022

In Life, Motivational, Philosophy

It’s something we tend to grow up always assuming is real. This reality, this universe that we see and hear around us, is always with us, ever present. But sometimes there are doubts.

There’s a thing in philosophy called the Simulation Argument. It posits that, given that our descendants will likely develop the technology to simulate reality someday, the odds are quite high that our apparent world is one of these simulations, rather than the original world. It’s a probabilistic argument, based on estimated odds of there being many such simulations.

A long time ago, I had an interesting experience. Back then, as a Christian, I wrestled with my faith and was at times mad at God for the apparent evil in this world. At one point, in a moment of anger, I took a pocket knife and made a gash in a world map on the wall of my bedroom. I then went on a camping trip, and overheard in the news that Russia had invaded Georgia. Upon returning, I found that the gash went straight through the border between Russia and Georgia. I’d made that gash exactly six days before the invasion.

Then there’s the memory I have of a “glitch in the Matrix”, so to speak. Many years ago, I was in a bad place mentally and emotionally, and I tried to open a second floor window to get out of a house that probably would have ended badly, were it not for a momentary change that caused the window, which had a crank to open, to suddenly become a solid frame with no crank or way to open. It happened for a split second. Just long enough for me to panic and throw my body against the frame, making such a racket as to attract the attention of someone who could stop me and calm me down.

I still remember this incident. At the time I thought it was some intervention by God or time travellers/aliens/simulators or some other benevolent higher power. Obviously I have nothing except my memory of this. There’s no real reason for you to believe my testimony. But it’s one reason among many why I believe the world is not as it seems.

Consider for a moment the case of the total solar eclipse. It’s a convenient thing to have occur, because it allowed Einstein to prove his Theory of Relativity in 1919 by looking at the gravitational lensing effect of the sun that is only visible during an eclipse. But total solar eclipses don’t have to be. They only happen because the sun is approximately 400 times the size and 400 times the distance from the Earth as the moon is. They are exactly the right ratio of size and distance for total solar eclipses to occur. Furthermore, due to gradual changes in orbit, this coincidence is only present for a cosmologically short time frame of a few hundred million years that happens to coincide with the development of human civilization.

Note that this coincidence is immune to the Anthropic Principle because it is not essential to human existence. It is merely a useful coincidence.

Another fun coincidence is the names of the arctic and antarctic. The arctic is named after the bear constellations of Ursa Major and Minor, which can be seen only from the northern hemisphere. Antarctic literally means opposite of arctic. Coincidentally, polar bears can be found in the arctic, but no species of bear is found in the antarctic.

There are probably many more interesting coincidences like this, little Easter eggs that have been left for us to notice.

The true nature of our reality is probably something beyond our comprehension. There are hints at it however, that make me wonder about the implications. So, I advise you to keep an open mind about the possible.

On Altruism

by Josephius

On July 2, 2022

In Life, Motivational, Philosophy

One thing I’ve learned from observing people and society is the awareness that the vast majority of folks are egoistic, or selfish. They tend to care about their own happiness and are at best indifferent to the happiness of others unless they have some kind of relationship with that person, in which case they care about that person’s happiness in so far as it has an effect on their own happiness to keep that person happy. This is the natural, neutral state of affairs. It is unnatural to care about other people’s happiness for the sake of themselves as ends. We call such unnatural behaviour “altruism”, and tend to glorify it in narratives but avoid actually being that way in reality.

In an ideal world, all people would be altruistic. They would equally value their own happiness and the happiness of each other person because we are all persons deserving happiness. Instead, reality is mostly a world of selfishness. To me, the root of all evil is this egoism, this lack of concern for the well-being of others that is the norm in our society.

I say this knowing that I am a hypocrite. I say this as someone who tries to be altruistic at times, but is very inconsistent with the application of the principles that it logically entails. If I were a saint, I would have sold everything I didn’t need and donated at least half my gross income to charities that help the global poor. I would be vegan. I would probably not live in a nice house and own a car (a hybrid at least) and be busy living a pleasant life with my family.

Instead, I donate a small fraction of my gross income to charity and call it a day. I occasionally make the effort to help my friends and family when they are in obvious need. I still eat meat and play computer games and own a grand piano that I don’t need.

The reality is that altruism is hard. Doing the right thing for the right reasons requires sacrificing our selfish desires. Most people don’t even begin to bother. In their world view, acts of kindness and altruism are seen with suspicion, as having ulterior motives of virtue signalling or guilt tripping or something else. In such a world, we are not rewarded for doing good, but punished. The incentives favour egoism. That’s why the world runs on capitalism after all.

And so, the world is the way it is. People largely don’t do the right thing, and don’t even realize there is a right thing to do. Most of them don’t care. There are seven billion people in this world right now, and most likely, only a tiny handful of people care that you or I even exist, much less act consistently towards our well-being and happiness.

So, why am I bothering to explain this to you? Because I think we can do better. Not be perfect, but better. We can do more to try to care about others and make the effort to make the world a better place. I believe I do this with my modest donations to charity, and my acts of kindness towards friends and strangers alike. These are small victories for goodness and justice and should be celebrated, even if in the end we fall short of being saints.

In the end, the direction you go in is more important than the magnitude of the step you take. Many small steps in the right direction will get you to where you want to be eventually. Conversely, if your direction is wrong, then bigger steps aren’t always better.

It’s Okay

by Josephius

On March 29, 2022

In Life, Motivational

The reality is that people sometimes do stupid things for stupid reasons. Our motivations aren’t always pure and worthy and too often we get carried away by emotions that lead us to do things we later regret. This happens a lot because we are human.

To be human is to be flawed. It is to be stupid at the worst possible moments in ways that will reverberate in painful memories that we feel later like we’ll never live down. Sometimes we don’t try our best. Sometimes we actively hurt ourselves and those around us because of the pain we are feeling and we act in ways that are senseless.

And it’s okay.

It’s not great of course. But at the end of the day, a reasonable person understands the difficulty of self-control, the challenge of being able to put our best foot forward day in and day out without lapses or moments of weakness where we struggle to be who we want to be rather than who we feel like.

We feel our own pleasure and pain first and foremost, and only notice the pleasure and pain of others secondarily through our ability to reflect and imagine what others must be feeling. This requires effort. Sometimes we just don’t feel capable. So selfishness is truly an understandable state.

Sometimes people can lash out in malice and then try to justify to themselves that the other deserves it. Cognitive dissonance can trap people in cycles of hatred and pain. These things are unfortunate. But they are understandably human reactions.

The important thing, the thing that not enough people do, is face the pain in themselves and recognize the extent to which they are holding onto things they don’t really need to. Sometimes it’s something they just can’t let go of. In which case one must show the kindest patience to them.

The right thing to do is often terribly hard to those for whom survival is a battle, who don’t have the luxury of distance, or the luck of gentler friendships. The world has made them understandably jaded and cynical. They probably will find it hard to trust you. And that’s also okay. You don’t need them to.

At the end of the day, what matters is that you don’t give up on them. You’re there if they ever need anything. You try to be encouragement when you can be, but you also understand the hurt they feel may never allow things to be as you’d hope. And that too is okay.

You may never know what it is in their hearts that makes them the way they are. But you understand that they are worthy of your kindness, because that’s who you want to be. And even if sometimes you feel frustrated and somehow make things worse, well, you’re human too.

No matter what they did, you want them to know it’s okay. You want them to be happy, even if it’s not something easy to say. And that too, is okay.