> You must seriously loathe yourself or live an incredibly sheltered life if you actually follow this (e.g. not just bottling up your emotions and pretending th

> You must seriously loathe yourself or live an incredibly sheltered life if you actually follow this (e.g. not just bottling up your emotions and pretending that you're okay). Nonsense. It’s actually quite the opposite. I’m a black man who’s been told my entire life that I’m a victim. And to an extent, I was a victim; I grew up in some of the worst environments in America, I’ve been through more trauma—including serious physical violence—than most folks, and my skin color was always my victimhood pass. I’ve been blessed to have had both of my parents married and in my life, and they did their best to teach me to be a responsible person, but everyone else always told me that I had excuses for my issues in life. You know what’s actually destructive? Allowing folks to live in a perpetual state of victimhood. It’s debilitating and renders you powerless. Not allowing myself to be a victim is quite literally the most powerful and life-changing thing to ever happen to me. Also, it’s not about “pretending” that I’m okay … I am. I’m a realist. I accept that life comes the way it does and figure out ways to move forward despite whatever comes at me. In the grand scheme of things, most of the things we tend to stress ourselves about aren’t actually that deep. And when they are, well, you’re still human, so it’s perfectly reasonable to react accordingly. If someone extremely close to me dies, you’re right, it might take slightly longer than a weekend to get through it, but I’m optimizing for the most likely situations; in my experience, most situations that have folks curling up in a ball aren’t “my dad died” situations.