When Someone Tells You How To Live Your Life

That flash of anger when someone pushes their “shoulds” onto your life — is to be listened to and trusted.

(your anger, not their words.)

Trust your heart’s signal that says: This is not right.

You are the one who has walked this fierce and solitary path — you know every jagged turn of choosing the road.

Nobody said it was easy, living the life of a non-conformist, freethinker, black sheep, misfit, free spirit, rebel, contrarian, Ubermensch.

Nobody said it was easy, being the one who questions, who walks off, who carries the name of the traitor just to stay alive.

But you know your truth because

You have sat night after night in darkness with your chosen life — if it felt like a choice at all — .

You have turned society’s scripts upside down, inside and out until your brain exhausted its doubts.

You have shuffled through every prescribed existence —

Through school bells that allow only obedience,

scriptures that demand unquestioning blind faith,

mortgage papers that bind souls to concrete,

corner offices that kill forgotten dreams,

retirement plans that starve spirits,

and social feeds that shine brighter than life itself.

You have seen slow death in someone’s eyes as they trade their truths for comfort, fire for conformity.

And you know deep in your bone living your authentic truth is the only way to not have your soul dwindle.

But then one day someone comes along.

They catch a glimpse of your highlight reel, decide it doesn’t match their projection, and suddenly they are the sage who knows your life better than you do.

And there they come — the unsolicited comments, judgments, advice — all those ‘well-meaning’ intentions forcing their way into your eardrums before you can escape.

They speak of universal truths that seem frozen in the Stone Age.

The ‘shoulds’ and the ‘musts’ and the ‘that’s how it’s done.’

They look at you with pity they call care, with judgment they call love.

Isn’t it fascinating how one can so confidently preach a script they never wrote?

Ah well,

Perhaps your life is simply too wild, too vast, too heretical and visibly free to fit in their neat boxes of expectations.

Perhaps nothing terrifies the guardians of old scripts more than someone who dares to write their own story.

This is when you, instead of sinking into self-judgment and shame, rise up with a “how dare you”

— spoken aloud or between your two ears.

Your anger is a sacred messenger, telling you something precious and authentic to you has been trampled upon.

Blessed is the moment when your heart rises in protest.

This is not blind rage, but your heart waking up to protect its sovereignty.

Remember where you have been — the dark nights of the soul, the journalling, the introspections, the books, the therapists, the brave reckoning with your trauma.

Why would you doubt any of that now?

Your truth was earned with every tear, every scream, every ache of loneliness.

That path was never simple or easy — it was true.

And truth, once earned, needs no defense.

Your rage is not here to destroy but to protect.

Let it wash through you to cleanse away doubt.

Their intrusion might have rattled your door, But they cannot soil the foundation of your house.

In time, you may even come to see them with softer eyes

— Like most of us confused, socially-conditioned and propaganda-poisoned humans, They too are stumbling toward their own truths.

They may be too burdened, too spiritually young to have gotten there. they may, in their own time.

But you do not need to save them, help them, teach them, enlighten them.

Simply recognize they drive in another lane

And have accidentally crossed the yellow line

— Gently guide them back to their space.

And in those moments when doubt creeps in, When noises of the crowd threatened to drown you,

May you let my blessings in:

May you trust the wisdom that brought you here.

May you honor the path that is uniquely yours.

May you find peace in knowing that your choices, though not understood by all

Are held in the tender understanding of your heart’s compass;

And the quiet joys in the evening, of knowing you could and would not have it any other way.

Your truth need not their permission to shine.

Your path need not their approval to be right.

Your journey need not their understanding to be sacred.

Actually, why don’t we

Let them talk. Let them worry. Let them wonder.

You have already chosen the harder path — and Your path knows its way home.

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche