“…everyday I wake up and I tell myself, Anya, be strong! Get your accreditations and get out! London is killing my dreams. ”
-Anya, 24
No. On so many levels. NO.
Oh, little Anya, stop telling yourself to be strong. Stop beating yourself up for having emotions and reactions. Don’t be strong. The whole world tells us that the winners are the strong ones, the hard ones, the ruthless ones. That your worth is purely economical. The world is Tough. It’s bigger and older. What makes you think you can win this game?
Instead, be compassionate. Be compassionate to yourself. Compassion and the urge to play are wonderfully human qualities. A lack of compassion may well be one of the reasons we’re in this mess. You are not a machine and trying to emulate one will end disastrously- either in Newtonian terms (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, e.g. A mental breakdown), or by turning into a robot.
ok, total honesty here. Practicing compassion is infinitely harder than keeping a stiff upper lip. Because…because…ohgodyouhavetolistentoyourself. You have to stop blanket-ignoring problems and start facing them and understanding them…and yourself. There is no Magic Map or Manual , no Lonely Planet Guide. Just you. And that is what really matters.
“Know yourself, and you will never lose”
Sun-tze was right millennia ago, and he’s annoyingly right now.
I am not advocating turning one’s back on the world. We do happen to be stuck on this planet for the time being, so why not improve the ways in which we interact with it and each other? Practicing compassion not only improves one’s life, it makes us better friends, sisters, mothers, bosses……..I think you can see where I’m going with this.
Now to address the second half of that heartbreakingly common speechlet.
No one and nothing can kill your dreams unless you let them. There is something almost, relieving about passing on the blame. The truth is that you are so so much stronger and more powerful than anything external (in terms of your dreams instead of, say, levelling a city. That’s what tornadoes are for!)
I wonder when I realised that the courage to be found in compassion is greater than brute force.
life is hard,in the big city. Then again, nothing worthwhile is easy.
*so, yeah, this is my first blog. I always thought it would be about food(I’m a chef), yoga (I’m a pretzel), feminism (cos I own a vagina) or drugs (so pro-legalisation!) but I seem to have chosen Life. I guess I didn’t factor in that above all, I am Human. And damn proud of it.
flambeedbanana 
Like the blog! How can I practice compassion in daily life – practical stuff? Keep up the flambee!
The first thing that springs to mind would be to wonder why someone might be speaking or acting in a painful way instead of focusing on how it makes you feel
Judge yourself by your standards; others by their standards
And remember, no matter how bad you feel and hate yourself, someone cares about you.