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The Cloak Of Toughness

To men stuck with ideas such as “real men don’t cry”

By Anthi PsomiadouPublished 2 years ago 3 min read
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Photo by Ameer Basheer on Unsplash

Every day, your persona performs the same act.

You put on your invisible cloak of toughness and you start pretending; pretending that feelings are signals of weakness, recalling your dad’s words: “real men don’t cry”. You unconsciously accept this opinion without critical thinking, because it rests on the — also unconsciously — formed belief that “crying equals weakness”.

You love, but you don’t say it.

You feel, but you don’t admit it.

You need a hug, but you don’t ask for it.

Sometimes you want to manifest weakness instead of superpower, but you never let it be as it is.

Wow! How heavy that cloak must be!

No wonder why you can’t walk lightly and freely…

You are enslaved, but you don’t realize it.

Freedom can’t breathe when you recklessly choose one of the two edges of an “energy’s” manifestation — a behavior — and get stuck there like a stubborn kid. Autonomy is about liberating yourself from every adhesion — even if it is considered positive — , and choose to act or react from the point between those two edges that is suitable for the condition you have in front of you in any given moment.

It’s about detaching yourself from every compulsive attachment.

It’s about keeping your inner axis stable — in contact with the sky and the ground simultaneously— , and be able to guide your energy freely to any direction that fits each challenge, using your Self’s criteria.

Not your mom’s.

Not your dad’s.

Not society’s.

Not the ones of your personality, with its subconscious-box filled with repressed or misinterpreted material.

The ones of your Self.

Then, you say “I love you” when you want to, without feeling weak, without caring if you will be considered too sentimental, without doing it to please someone.

You cry or you don’t cry, according to your choice.

You hug or you don’t hug, depending on your volition, not your beliefs.

You become self-identified.

And this way, you love others even more and purely, because you don’t need to “possess” them or control them. You love them because you already experience an inner fullness, not to fill a gap inside you. You don’t expect anything in return, that’s why the “everything” is coming to you in return.

This way, you can put on the cloak of toughness, only when you need to declare the limits of your non-material personal vital space to someone who “didn’t get the message”, instead of having pre-decided to wear it every day, out of fear, insecurity, and desire to defend a label you — or others — has put to yourself.

Eventually, you will abandon all these labels.

You will unchain yourself. It’s destiny.

And, yes, I know. You’ll do it whenever it is to be done...

But — for Self’s sake — , try! Start toiling for freedom.

Because every day away from it, is another day your inner field remains under-watered. You wither, instead of blooming.

Painful realizations will come up towards it. But, if you will dare to use them for evolution, the pain will be alchemized into a tool for your metamorphosis. It is only through dealing with pain that we free ourselves from it, and we pass to non-pain. It is only through the hurricane that we find the real sunshine. We become the ones who can stand on their feet, no matter what happens in the outer field. We become impenetrable. We become what we really were from the Beginning and we didn't know it. We uncover the real "I".

If you have the guts, take responsibility, and start the journey.

The suitable time is right now.

The suitable time is “fight now”!

***

Anthi Psomiadou — CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International : Credit must be given to the creator/ Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted/ No derivatives

humanity
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About the Creator

Anthi Psomiadou

Writing, Life coaching, Criminology, and more. But I simply do these, I am not these. I just am. I am what I am, at any given moment.

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