medbean

[medbean]

I feel like it would be useful if people conceived of causing emotional harm to others more through the lens of being the emotional equivalent to stepping on someone’s foot. Like obviously you can step on someone’s foot deliberately and maliciously, but most of the time if someone tells you you stepped on their foot you’re going to go “oh sorry I didn’t realise!” and stop doing it and try not to do it again. Getting caught up in how it makes you feel to be Someone Capable of Stepping on Others’ Feet would be a transparently self indulgent distraction from the other person’s pain, but also like… that’s just a status you hold by virtue of being human. Never ever ever stepping on someone’s foot is not really achievable, and therefore is not necessary to being a Good Person: what matters is that you do not step on others’ feet deliberately, and – most importantly – that you react kindly and calmly to any inadvertent foot-stepping you have been doing being brought to your attention, so that you can make best use of it as something that will help you reduce the amount of foot-stepping you will do in the future.

[medbean]

being in your early 20s is crazy bc there’s people who are literally married and people who’ve never even dated and people who are trapped in their childhood bedrooms waiting to get out and people who are trying to live out romanticized dream lives and people who are completely on their own and people with multi tiered support systems and we’re all supposedly peers and none of us think we’re doing it right at all

[medbean]

*through gritted teeth* you are not a child taking a test with the purpose of getting the highest score, you are an adult trying new things and finding ways to enjoy your life, make mistakes, be a beginner, be mediocre, be where you need to be, be unlikeable, just. be.

[medbean]

Fever is a hilarious immune response. Our bodies tell the disease “hey, wanna see which one of us dies of overheating first? No? Too bad.” and honestly they’re not even the winners a decent chunk of the time but it works often enough that we never evolved it away or anything. Fantastic work.

[medbean]

i think people think i’m lying when i say that i don’t want to “be” anyone or anything and that i don’t care about conventional success. but nothing would make me happier than being left alone to just breathe and exist if my basic necessities were covered for life

[medbean]

sometimes plushies make me cry because it’s like. they’re little guys made to be loved. their only purpose is to be held and hugged and loved. we made them because we love making things and we love loving things. and they’re so cute

[medbean]

so eye-opening to understand that self-love and self-sufficiency are inherently different concepts. if you enjoy going to places alone, cooking alone, taking a walk by yourself, you’re self-sufficient—able to both rely on and luxuriate in your own company in instances where you’re on your own. but self-love has more to do with how compassionate you are to yourself when you make mistakes: with understanding that failure is human, that it’s unavoidable at times, and that you should be kind to yourself when it happens rather than critical of your shortcomings. this is why the whole adage that “you can’t truly be loved by someone else until you love yourself” kind of falls flat for me. finding someone else who’s emotionally secure & available has been proven to help you become more compassionate/kind/patient to yourself (self-love), even if you already know how to spend time alone (self-sufficiency). confusing these two things has led people to mistakenly believe that wanting human connection means that you can’t rely on yourself, when in reality it’s perfectly valid to want a bond that strengthens your self-esteem and encourages you to pursue life the way you want to

[medbean]

Is it just me or does having a positive interaction with a stranger scratch a very particular itch? I think it's the reassurance that the world is not split solely into people who already love you and people who never will.

[medbean]

Sophia Joan Short

[medbean]

serious post. start combating any misinformation you find. monkeypox is not an sti. monkeypox spreads through *any form of contact*. it is not exclusive to queer people, and it is *not* queer people's fault. we can not let history repeat itself. don't let flashy headlines take the place of medical facts and information.

conservatives are already itching to start a witchhunt against LGBT people and monkeypox is something they are going to latch onto.

don't let them. don't let this turn into a repeat of the AIDS crisis.

[medbean]

Deer and cherry blossoms in Nara park, Japan

(via)

[medbean]

I’m really not a dog person, like when faced with an actual dog I find they’re just kinda slobbery and noisy and they make weird smells and I’m not a big fan

but I still have super strong feelings about dogs as a concept. I mean we take these animals and we shape them into the perfect companions for our species in a process that takes tens of thousands of years. We make them so that they love us, and serve us, and will learn how to do whatever we need them to do. We make them want to guard us while we sleep, to guard our livestock, to guard our homes, to help us hunt, to act as beasts of burden, to watch our children and our fields. They’ll learn how to see for us. They’ll run into burning buildings for us. Dogs walked beside us every step of the way as we became the dominant species on the planet. And all they ever ask for in return is enough food to stay alive and as much love as we will give them.

I mean, people talk a lot these days about how we’re ‘playing God’ with genetic engineering, or with artificial intelligence, and they make that sound very ominous, but when you think about it, we, as a species, have already created another species. And I am heartened and humbled to know that, when humanity set about the daunting and monumental task of creating another race to be our companions on Earth, we made something as noble and selfless and loving as dogs.

And I feel like the fact that we have created such obviously good creatures who only want to serve us confers upon us a responsibility to be gentle and kind and compassionate with them. In an existential and anthropological sense, they’re humanity’s children. We gotta be nice to dogs. We owe them that much.

I dunno man, I think about this stuff. I don’t gotta be a dog person to be grateful. good dogs. thank you dogs. we might not be here without you.

[medbean]

getting older is great idk why there’s this lie that “omg as soon as you hit 25 ur life is over and ur old” like no you get older and gain wisdom and confidence and imo you get even better looking as you age, like you learn sooo so much and I still have SO much life left to live, there’s so much left to see in this life :o)

[medbean]

no one tells you how much of life takes practice. not just writing, painting, running, singing, etc, but practicing how to make friends. how to make the right ones. getting practiced at how to be a good friend, a good sibling, a good person. practice identifying when people haven’t earned that. learning to recognize your right to rage and, eventually, how to offer mercy. so much of life is muscle memory, and i’ve begun to realize there are so many more parts of ourselves to flex and stretch and strengthen than those we’re taught in anatomy lessons

[medbean]

in a parasocial relationship with the sea

[medbean]

not to sound like a medieval peasant or a catholic but i resent anti-carb propaganda so much like bread will never be evil it is holy it is divine it is one of life’s most simple yet decadent pleasures. love is stored in the bread

[medbean]

Success is not final, failure is not final. It is the courage to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill (via heavyrain-dc)