Happiness is always a choice. Always. So is taking\u00a0offense.\u00a0No exceptions.<\/p>\n
Anyone who says otherwise does not want you to be an empowered, liberated human being. They are teaching you to believe that you are a powerless victim, unable to control your own destiny.<\/p>\n
There are only two classes of things in this world: things that act, and things that are acted upon.\u00a0Empowerment is when you give somebody the ability to act for themselves, independent of outside forces. Disempowerment is when you\u00a0take that ability away.<\/p>\n
There is nothing more empowering than to realize that no matter where you are in life\u2014no matter how shitty your circumstances\u2014you can always still choose to be happy.<\/p>\n
Happiness is a feeling that only exists inside of you. It is not something external that is forced or bestowed upon you by outside forces. It is wholly internal to your heart and mind. It is a reaction to outside forces\u2014a reaction that you choose to make.<\/p>\n
If happiness is not a choice\u2014if it is something over which we have no control\u2014then we cannot have any control over any of our feelings. Our passions are\u00a0external forces that act upon us, and we are powerless to stop them because our\u00a0emotional development ended at age two.<\/p>\n
Is there anything empowering or liberating about this philosophy? No. Quite the opposite. It\u00a0debases mankind and makes us no better than the animals. It destroys our agency and makes us slaves to our passions.<\/p>\n
Happiness is always a choice.<\/p>\n
In a similar way,\u00a0it is always a choice to feel offended. Why? Because offense\u00a0is a reaction to external forces, just as our feelings are reactions to external forces. If we cannot choose how we react to\u00a0the things that happen to us, then we have no agency\u2014no power to act for ourselves.<\/p>\n
If taking offense\u00a0is not a choice, then we are always at the mercy of those who offend us.\u00a0Forgiveness is impossible because we are powerless to react in any other way. We are, and always will be, victims.<\/p>\n
Does this mean that if someone hurts us, it is our fault for feeling hurt? No, because there is a difference between being hurt and taking\u00a0offense. Hurt is\u00a0a result of external forces, while offense is an internal reaction to those forces. It is impossible to love someone without giving them the power to hurt you, but how you respond to that hurt is always your choice.<\/p>\n
In politics today, there is an increasingly popular idea that being a victim somehow makes you virtuous. This is where intersectionality comes from: so that people can claim to belong to two or three victim groups at the same time. It grows out of the idea that fairness is equality of outcome, and it is completely anathema to the idea of personal responsibility.<\/p>\n
What does “responsibility” mean? It comes from two words: “able” and “response.” When you are responsible, you are able to choose your own response to the things that happen to you. You are an empowered free agent, a liberated human being.<\/p>\n
Can you see how\u00a0the modern cult of victimhood completely undermines this? How things like safe spaces, trigger warnings, and microaggressions are all calculated to destroy our individual agency, and thus render us powerless to control our own destiny?<\/p>\n
The flipside of the coin of Liberty is personal responsibility. Anything that erases\u00a0the latter will destroy\u00a0the former with it, and those who give up their responsibilities also give up their freedom.\u00a0When we surrender our ability to choose our own response, we are no longer people who act but people who are acted upon.<\/p>\n
Brigham Young wisely said<\/a>:<\/p>\n He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Offense is not something you are, it is something you take.\u00a0And it is always\u2014ALWAYS<\/em>\u2014a choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Happiness is always a choice. Always. So is taking\u00a0offense.\u00a0No exceptions. Anyone who says otherwise does not want you to be an empowered, liberated human being. They are teaching you to believe that you are a powerless victim, unable to control your own destiny. There are only two classes of things in this world: things that… Continue reading Happiness is always a choice. So is being offended.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[599],"class_list":["post-10609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-2L7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10616,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10609\/revisions\/10616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n