be your own hero

(image from Ashlee Craft / Assemblage, Issue 10)

Happiness is the best revenge. Or, as I also love stating frequently : haters gonna hate. The people who don’t like you don’t like you because they feel like you’re above them, or because they’re afraid of you being better than they are, because they are jealous of you. Because they are made uncomfortable by your vastness, your talent, your personality, your brilliance. If they really were above you, they wouldn’t see a point in bringing you down. Down is the key word in that. People who are vast, successful, happy, wealthy (in things more than just money), etc, have what they need, & don’t need to hinder or hold back or quell or block out or squash or shadow or disrespect anyone in any way, ever. They don’t have to do that in order to feel better about themselves. Because they are BIG. Because they are bright + brilliant. Without having to take light away from others in order to feel powerful.

The people who don’t like you aren’t really above you at all. For a minute, they might seem like they do – they might make more money, or have a better car, or more “friends”, or have an attractive & charming significant other, or an important sounding job. But trust me – if they’re that hell-bent on causing pain & sadness to you, they probably lead bitter, sad lives, or at the very least, have doubts about their confidence or their choices. People who are comfortable with themselves build people up & are excited when they do well.

So, if you’re dealing with someone who makes you feel bad about who you are or the choices that you make, or anything else, let your happiness, & your success, be your revenge to them. It will annoy them to see you doing well in the ways they thought you never could. No matter what you do, they still won’t like you, so you might as well do what makes you happy & pursue happiness like the wealth that it is. Be so damn happy that they shake their heads in absolute & utter confusion about how someone they think is as fill-in-the-blank as you can be so happy. Be so successful in your endeavors, so dedicated in your hard work + pursuit of a really really good life, that the people who don’t like you may find themselves desperately wishing that their lives resembled yours, and that they were as happy as you.

But in the end, it never really was about them anyways. This whole process was never about how your actions affect them, because there are so many more worthwhile things to do than caring what someone who doesn’t respect you thinks. It’s all about proving yourself & your beliefs about what’s possible wrong by providing the best life possible for yourself & reaching a higher level of self-love. It’s about asserting your own belief in yourself & confidence in your opinions. Your happiness being “revenge” is the one type of revenge which is about building someone up rather than tearing someone down. All their efforts to tear you down & make you feel bad about yourself are exceeded by you pushing back against them, rising up higher again & again, overcoming their darkness by you shouting you from rooftops “I AM GOOD ENOUGH. I DESERVE BETTER.” It is the one thing you can do in response to all their darkness which reasserts that you are free from them, they never owned you at all, that you are your very-own person which their choices and words do not influence, that you will not be broken by them. That you will keep marching right on forward & becoming positively radiant in the face of all that lies ahead for you. And in succeeding where others would love to see you fall, by continuing to try even when they try to tell you that you’ll never make it, I think this is when you start to know what it means to be your own hero.

Remember that you’re rad, & you’re so deserving of love + respect, & so deserving of an absolutely magical, epic, badass, beautiful, & awesome life filled with great experiences, dreams coming true, & complete happiness so brilliant it makes your haters need sunglasses. You deserve it.