"The world is against me"

​Face the world with confidence, but most importantly-with kindness

Yup, I was that dramatic kid that would always pull out this phrase growing up when I didn’t think anyone was going through what I was going through. I fell into the personal fable syndrome of thinking I was unique and different from all.

Today I read in the book of John and learned two things:

1. The world is against me
2. First statement is true because I am different.

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In John 15:18–19, John writes,

“If the world hates you, know that is has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

John is speaking to believers here. He is not trying to bring believers down.  Instead he is reminding believers that life will be a challenging one because we are not of this world; however, he is still encouraging us to stand tall. We may grow up in this world, but it is God who has created us and custom-made us for his mission.

John comforted me in this excerpt because he said “It’s okay, you are not alone.” When life gets tough, I like to isolate myself. I remove myself from the dilemma by simply walking away from it, but I don’t think that is what John or God wants me to do.

Instead, John writes to us that the reason why we can’t understand the world all the time is because we are different. The world seems against us, and it is because it is; we are not of it so it logically has no reason to like us believers.

I believe that the world tries to be way too logical for its well-being. For example, when you have someone in a group project whom you believe isn’t really doing their share, the logical thing to do is feel anger, and maybe let it out for your own well-being. Talk some truth in them; “Hey, get yourself together. This is a group project, so do your share.”

I encountered a situation similar to this a couple of weeks ago. I was having an off day, and while I was checking my group’s essay, I found so many spelling and grammatical errors that would have been easily caught if they looked over their section on their own. I did the worldly, logical thing to do: I expressed my anger. “Can’t you remember to put a period? What do you mean by this, I’m confused, explain this. Wow, (chuckle), just wow.”
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Little did I know that one of the girls in my group had dyslexia. I guess she didn’t feel the need to share until then, as I was ranting about the little spelling errors and minuscule mistakes. I could have easily taken a breath, and fixed the errors in silence with a little more grace if I took a step back from the words on the paper and into the bigger picture.

I don’t know everyone’s story. I’m not God. But I also don’t have to be of the world, and resort to the logical response to my friends for not giving it their all. I have a Type A personality and believe that I should give 100% in whatever I do. I’m the girl that doesn’t calculate what percent she needs on her finals because I make the commitment to do my best in every exam, and accept the grade I get in each class at the end of the day. I could not have to show up on my exam for one class and have to get a 99% in another class, but will put equal studying into both because I weight every class as the same. Is that logical? Hell no. But is it wrong? Who knows? Morality is a gray area, so I guess not necessarily.
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However, just because I have Type A personality doesn’t mean everyone else does either. Just because I’m having a bad day doesn’t mean I have to bring others down with me. And just because I care about a paper more than others in no means indicates that I am better than any other girl in my group. We all have a story. Maybe she has dyslexia. Maybe she pulled an all-nighter studying for her next class’s exam. And maybe I definitely need to understand that I am different, and that’s okay.

So yeah, the world is going to seem against us, because it is. Growing up, my mother would always tell me to kill the mean bullies and people who didn’t respect me with kindness. “It’’ll blind-side them, Olivia. They never see it coming.” When the world is being really mean to you, take a breath, ask God for some extra grace, and shoot with high doses of kindness. They’ll never see it coming.

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when someone gives you a fist, give them kindness