Mermay 2025 - Day 3 🫧🐟

@batshit-auspol congrats ur famous

They're everything. He's just Jim.

hope is a skill

#hopepunk #thank you

Hope, kindness, and compassion are skills. You can get better at them. Some people are naturally better or worse at them and sometimes something happens that makes them hard for you and that's okay. Just like coming back to work or a sport or other activity after an injury, you can slowly work up to it.

If you don't feel like you're a kind person, but you want to be, good news! You can be! It will just take some training just like any other skill.

A lot of people lack hope and you know what that's fair. But hope isn't this ephemeral thing the universe just gives you. It takes work to build a hopeful mindset. It's a skill.

If compassion is hard for you I'll tell you that it was once hard for me and now people tell me I'm the most compassionate person they know. Because I decided I wanted to feel compassion for everyone, even the people who hurt me, and started practicing.

They're skills and they are ESSENTIAL for living a happy life. If you want to be happy you have to be kind. If you want to feel joy without a cloud hanging over your head you need hope. And if you want to hurt less, you need compassion. I know you can do it. Good luck!

Guys, gals, genderless beings of divine origin, share your fuckin joys. You’re gonna feel weird about it because of The Horrors but it’s important I’m actually so fucking serious right now. Wear your joy like armor against the onslaught of bullshit. Don’t let them take that from you, they don’t deserve it. They need you sapped of joy and the joie de vivre that’s makes you so fucking incredible and loveable and amazing. They need you utterly hopeless. A hopeless and joyless soul is a compliant soul. Your joy is an act of rebellion. Read your fuckin books, listen to your fuckin music, watch your fuckin shows, play your fuckin games, write your fuckin stores, learn a new synth, figure out how to skip rocks, get a used camera, learn something new….AND FUCKING TELL ME ABOUT IT. I AM COMPLETELY SERIOUS. I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR JOY. I WANT TO SEE THE IMAGE THAT BRINGS YOU HOPE. I WANT TO HEAR THE SONG THAT GIVES YOU LIFE. PUT IT IN MY ASKS. REBLOG THIS WITH IT. The Horrors exist but your joy is a counter attack.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of shame:

Shame for doing something actually bad

Shame for doing something others/society has told you is bad

The first includes things that actually cause harm to someone, like a thoughtless comment or stepping on your dog's paw, etc. These are actions which require acknowledgement and amends.

The second is much broader, and includes everything from liking bad movies to being queer. These are things that may be unusual but are ultimately harmless. Someone or something in your life has just treated that oddity as a transgression, and one way or another you've internalized that perspective.

In my opinion it is crucially important for your well-being to be able to separate the two. If you don't, and you're treating the shame of having punched someone identically to liking a critically-panned movie, you're going to be a anxious wreck. You'll be constantly over-analyzing and policing yourself, feeling like a bad person who's just been really good at hiding it so far.

In the worst cases you might lash out at other people enjoying harmless things, redirecting your shame outward and becoming unable to distinguish truly harmful actions from those you’ve just been taught are bad.

Shame is a feeling that can really eat away at you if you let it. It's best to know when it's appropriate. If it is, you can act on it to resolve what's happened. If it's not, you can let that feeling go so it doesn't take any more from you.

"Do you ever dream of land?" The whale asks the tuna.

"No." Says the tuna, "Do you?"

"I have never seen it." Says the whale, "but deep in my body, I remember it."

"Why do you care," says the tuna, "if you will never see it."

"There are bones in my body built to walk through the forests and the mountains." Says the whale.

"They will disappear." Says the tuna, "one day, your body will forget the forests and the mountains."

"Maybe I don't want to forget," Says the whale, "The forests were once my home."

"I have seen the forests." Whispers the salmon, almost to itself.

"Tell me what you have seen," says the whale.

"The forests spawned me." Says the salmon. "They sent me to the ocean to grow. When I am fat with the bounty of the ocean, I will bring it home."

"Why would the forests seek the bounty of the oceans?" Asks the whale. "They have bounty of their own."

"You forget," says the salmon, "That the oceans were once their home."

Your friends watching something for the first time and getting to that scene VS you, the knower.