people will hate you

I went to see a performance earlier this week. And I found it beautiful, awe-inspiring, and amazing as I always tend to find live performances. This one was doubly excellent because the performer's art is amazing but so is his dialogue, commentary, and stories between performances.

At one point, introducing one of his pieces, he said something that really resonated with me:

People will hate you.

People hating you is inescapable, he argued. They will hate you for reasons that are out of your control, have nothing to do with you, or aren't even consistent. Everyone will have people who hate them.

Within this reality, he went on to say, you might as well be yourself. You're going to be hated anyway, by at least a few people.

https://nofsgiven.wordpress.com/

I loved this. It's true - people are going to dislike you, no matter what you do. It's just part of being a human being. And I'm working on another post about gender and subtle sexism and what is "permissible" for me as a woman in academia (and a woman in general) that really highlights how people will judge and dislike you for reasons you can't control.

Over the past twelve to eighteen months I've been working a lot on grounding myself. I've been working on breaking my habit of people pleasing, trying to dissolve my tendency to think about what other people will think and not live my life based on how other people will perceive it.

I've been putting in lots of effort to disconnect from my career in a healthy manner - to care less about who disagrees with my opinions, to use my voice regardless of whether other people will agree or think I'm insane, and to not take work home with me but leave it on campus (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively). Hearing "people will hate you" brought all of these experiences, thoughts, and goals down to a single phrase, which is perhaps why I liked it so much. I think it's my new slogan for a lifestyle that is increasingly becoming focused on just giving zero fucks.