In Common Light
Rooted reflections on belonging and being
Category: culture
Reflecting on and challenging cultural norms, socialization, and commonly accepted truths
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“Something seems different, everyone seems happier,” my friend said to me as we walked along the crowd of our senior class, back to our regularly scheduled school day. We had just had a pep rally on the football field, and we both had noticed the change of the general social atmosphere of our peers. We…
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Shame makes us feel like we are inherently flawed or inadequate in some way. It threatens our sense of connection, and therefore triggers the stress response, producing a felt sense, rather than mere cognitive thoughts, of unworthiness, brain fog, and a sense of being watched and in the spotlight (Firefly Therapy Austin). The feeling of…
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Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967 said, “We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society.” And yet here we are with massive wealth inequalities and rampant materialism. When we focus more on things, we focus less on people. When we focus more on things, we focus less on the…
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Sometimes, the idea of being held accountable feels scary. This is the case when it feels like an attack on our character—an experience deeply rooted in shame. Once we free ourselves from shame and recognize that guilt allows us to redeem ourselves, we can feel the gifts of accountability: earning (instead of being automatically granted)…
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Social power is transactional. When one group loses, another group gains. We may understand this in economic terms. Money is transactional. People give up money for some type of product. What is not so obvious is that power is also transactional. We think that power is one-way. That we have power, and that is that…
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We often hear the phrases, “Nobody has life figured out,” and “Nobody knows what they are doing.” Upon hearing them for the first time, I felt relieved. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough in my school, I felt like everyone was happy all the time. I felt like there was something that I was…
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When I first started practicing yoga, I was a bit surprised when I first heard the common saying from the instructors: “Do what feels good, do what feels right.” I asked myself “Really? Doing what feels right can help my physical and mental health? It doesn’t require something super difficult, strenuous, or hard?” I thought…
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I have a lost a lot of friendships in my life. It was upon reflecting on one of these friendships that I came to realize something about how we understand human connections under capitalism. When I reflected on this particular friendship that I had lost, I reflected on our shared memories and said to myself,…
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The opposite of love is not hate, but fear. When someone expresses an act of hate, it often is an expression of fear. In this post, I will: Fear Only Serves the Ego The Evolutionary Benefit of Fear Fear evolved as a survival mechanism to protect us from danger. Fear is “caused by particular patterns…
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As I was moving through college, I often asked myself, “What career will I have?”. During my first year, I considered nursing. So I took a Chemistry class and attended a Health conference, only to realize that science was not for me. During my second year, I considered being a therapist. So I took an…
In Common Light 