Don't ever let someone tell you what you can do, and who you are
An old man went with his son and a donkey on the way to a nearby market place to sell his goods. The father was sitting on the donkey the boy led.
"The poor boy," said an opposing man. "His short little legs try to keep up with the donkey. How can that man sit there so lazily on the donkey when he see that the little child is running tired."
The father took this to heart, descended behind the next corner, and let the boy sit down. It was not long before a voice was heard:
"What a disgrace! Sit the son like a king on the donkey, while his poor old father walks alongside."
This hurt the boy, and he asked his father to sit behind him on the donkey.
"Have you seen this before?" An old woman cried, "What little respect for the poor animal so famished, which not even can pull with the weight of the two."
The scoundrels looked at each other and, without saying a word, both descended from the donkey. As soon as they had walked a few steps beside the animal, a stranger was making fun of her:
"I would not be so stupid. Why do you take the donkey for a walk, if he does not do anything, does not benefit you, and does not even carry one of you?"
Source: Anonymous
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Anonymous
Something we must understand about life is that, whatever you do, there will always be someone who criticizes you, because the world is full of people, and people have different opinions. If we change our way of being each time someone points a finger at us, then we will lose our identity, and trying to please everyone, will not please anyone.
If we live for others we will never be happy, in fact, we will not even be.
Many times we will meet people who want to control us, want to say how we should act and how we should think, people who want to be our masters. If we ignore them we will effectively become their slaves. However, we must ignore these people, because they are destructive, and because they seek to submit in favor of what they consider correct.
There will always be people who hate us for the things we believe, there will always be people who hate us for our way of thinking, there will always be people who hated us for our way of acting and being, however, that is good, because it means that we are real It means that we are honest and that we believe in something, above all it means that we are strong and we can defend our principles.
The reality is that there will always be people hating us for what we do, you have the power to decide if you want to be hated for being who you are, or if you want to be hated for being someone who you not are.
Image Source: 1
Seldom do people bother to "hate": it takes too much energy! It is a matter of trying to control, though, as you rightly point out, I would agree. But here is boils down to little more than sparring, and very little actual manipulation goes on. It's just not very dignified and lacks intelligence. I'm getting fed up of it, personally.
I was working on a piece that was working out my latest conclusion that nobody hears anybody properly out here. One of the flaws of Steemit is that there are not enough strong thinkers here. They tend to make better listeners. They weigh up and judge the words not the speaker. People here tend to be vulnerable and feel attacked very easily. Don't forget most of them come from "bad" places (FB, unemployment, opppression, poverty, social isolation,social abuse etc). Most of them want to be discovered as a person and not known only for their content. This is not a journalistic forum.
There are actually very few personal opinion pieces on Steemit (fear culture reigns, even where anarchy is promoted). All that dissing and negativity towards eachother is actually an inability to hear eachother properly. The sycophantic praise is the other side of the same coin. Yawn.
#practicalthought, Jason, sums it up nicely for me with one of his tags for his latest post: quitbeingselfcentred. He still takes it all a bit too seriously, though, what can you expect from something that is after all never meant to become a social-media platform but can't possibly become a community therefore. People need to "meet" somehow on a personal front (hence the popularity of Discord) to discover whether they can trust eachother. (Not that Discord works for me because you still need to be very intuitive to decode such messaging. Most people read what they want to hear.).
The same thing happens here as anywhere on the net: niche groups end up knowing eachother - and they already do so in real life, anyway, only now maybe a little more globally; but the circuit stays pretty closed anyway. DON'T suggest anything out of their ordinary, for example... it will not be welcome. Don't debate art with an artist. Don't offer an alternative view on a recipe.).
Just be nice. I'm not sure I have time for that.Not that there is any reason to not be nice! So there may be very little possibility to sustain a presence out here if you are naturally the poser of provocative questions (for the sake of waking souls up and stimulating an innovating current).
The core of your post is rock solid: There is no pleasing all of the people all of the time, and it's even near impossible to please some of the people some of the time.
I quite agree, and what you say about Steemit is easily applicable to modern society as a whole. Nobody likes to be contradicted and everyone has a virtually inalterable truth, so any attempt to change it will not lead to a discussion but to silence, in that silence you will be judged and labeled as contrary, but there will not be a real dialogue that allows us to improve.
It is also true that nobody listens correctly to other people, and that everyone interprets things the way they want to do. In the past I've done some posts, in which my goal is to explain a problem, but then in the comments come people and return to raise exactly the same problem solved in the post, without taking into consideration absolutely nothing of what I wrote.
But I think that all this is a symptom of an asocial society where nobody trusts anyone else.
Finally, I also believe that there is no reason not to be nice, I try to be all the time, but being nice does not mean being weak, and there must be a line where you stay. I will be nice all the time, but I will also stay firm in what I believe. And I'm not talking about being inflexible, it is possible to change our beliefs and our way of being, but we must always defend it.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and comment. Regards!
To second all the above, I can confirm that you are unmistakeably more than"nice" which is a bit too tame a word for a serious but playful inquirer. How else can we examine truth values unless we respect everybody's personal beliefs? Why do people feel attacked by such intelligence? ("we can't build our dreams on suspicious minds"....)
People have become very used to a victim mentality (being able to sue for lots of money promotes this attractive option!) This means they can't "take much" and make a big fuss whenever one needs to be harsh but fair and crack on to address more interesting or pressing themes.
It is quite clear (to me) that you can be "firm" in your standpoints, because you can trust yourself to be harsh but fair on yourself, too. All that requires is the flexible intelligence to change your mind as and when you need to.
This is staying accountable for your thoughts as your own; owning it not because you hope to be more powerful, but because they really are your own inspirations and living imaginations. This it the only way we can effect change and hope to inspire. It would be NICE however to not have to defend oneself all the time over non-issues: it's such a tedious waste of time!
I suppose finding a mature audience is my future priority. And yes probably a more earnest bunch who know how to cope with more serious material with a good dose of dry wit. (And don't get lost in lost causes, either.)
Have you any views on the average life-span (here on Steemit!) of a dedicated poster like yourself?
The reality is that there is no average life-span here at Steemit, since as the interest on the page rises and falls according to market prices. I have met quite a few nice people who have left for different reasons, although I could not define a line as average.
The best thing that I have learned during the months that I have been here, is that if you publish, you must do it for yourself, you should write about what you like and what you could write for yourself, because many publications will not have visits or rewards . But if it persists it is very likely that you will find the right audience, because in Steemit there are simply all kinds of people.
So, even if we can't quite speak of "camps" there may be a divide between die-hard community builders (Steemit as one happy family) and bandwidth seekers?
Many people are also part of the two, everything depends on incentives. If it becomes too expensive (many time and few profits/visits) to stay here, people will leave, even those who stay do so because of the incentives to stay.
Even people who might qualify as "die-hard community builders" have left because they have been disappointed or lost incentives.
On the contrary, many others have stayed here when the market falls, although they are for money, they see the distant possibility of earning more.
As I said in a comment recently.
It is complicated.
Yes, complicated. I might call upon you later (in 7 weeks) for advice on what to do with my steem when I leave.
Well, I'll be happy to help if you ask for my advice, although in 7 weeks you may change your mind. Greetings.
I just tell you that you have a habit of telling stories that I've already heard/read from random sources.
Saved the Best for the last
Happy Steeming!
what is great about being right is that I can defend my positions when I get the chance, unlike those who down vote my posts and then can't even muster a comment.
There is a moment in one of the Indiana Jones movies where young Indie exclaims "Everyone is lost but me!", he had the right idea.
Bro Your post really is good, brother, you upvote us. Because every upvote of yours is very valuable.
Great post, I haven’t heard this story before. Puts a lot of things in perspective 👌