Dismiss What Offends Your Own Soul.

Greetings and salutations!!!

Full head of steam tonight! I think one of the things that I’m learning is to reframe my relationships between friends, romantic partners and colleagues at work. I have to set appropriate boundaries so that things go well.

Walt Whitman, who’s one of my favourite poets, had this to say about living life.

” This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. “

This is an exhaustive list, and we’ll go through this together, but the part that has caused me the most grief to follow is ” dismiss whatever insults your soul”.

Dismiss whatever insults your soul. But what does that even mean? Not to be as poetical as Mr. Whitman, but I personally think it means you get rid of anything or everything that causes you pain–not just physical or mental pain, but what is totally antithetical to what you are as a person. One can have disagreements without someone insulting your soul, but if those disagreements are fundamentally based on who you are, what you do, what you believe in…if it goes against the core of your existence, I think that counts as something that insults your own soul.

I’ve had cause today to recast and to think about actions that insult my soul. I can’t really go into it now, but suffice to say that I was offended. Deeply offended. Not because the sin or action was major, but because what occurred directly showed me what someone thinks of me. And that thought…insulted my soul. That thought, as expressed in the way it was expressed showed me clearly and unequivocally how they saw me. If they saw me in that way, then there is no point in maintaining bonds that are extraneous, or frivolous. Just the basics.

I have to admit, I was furious. FURIOUS. It’s hard when people obliquely accuse you of lying or being dishonest. It’s hard when people don’t recognize the sacrifices you’re making or the difficulties that you face. It’s maddening when you realize that you’ve tried to be loyal and a decent person in the face of adversity, and that people are willing to make judgments without doing any research whatsoever. It’s all of that, and deeply disappointing. THAT offended my soul.

So things that offend my soul, to the best of my ability are removed from my life as much as I can. I like the freedom it affords me, and that’s a good thing. And it’s sad that it’s come to this…and no, it’s not a personal relationship/significant other kind of thing. LOL. This is just me having to take care of me first.