What’s important to remember is… what Curly said in “City Slickers”, the 1991 blockbuster movie hit starring Western Cowboy movie legend Jack Palance and comedian turned movie star, Billy Crystal.
What’s important to remember is just one thing.
That you are who you decide to be. And what matters to you is the one thing that gives your particular life subjectively unique purpose and the actual meaning.
It’s not a statement to be taken lightly, the phrase “You are who you decide to be.” We are all who we decide to emulate socially and emotionally or to self-create.
You decide who you are. You decide how you want to act.
You decide if being abused, neglected, or abandoned as a child is going to make or break you.
It’s up to you to decide whether or not you choose to become someone who hurts or helps others.
Broken people do hurt people on occasion, yes. But typically the broken people of the world are those targeted by Cluster B people for varying degrees of social, physical, and emotional harm. Most people who are the victims of abuse go out of their way to avoid hurting other people because they know what being hurt feels like and they would not be able to live with themselves if they did things like batter, lie to, or gaslight other humans.
By saying, “BUT… what’s important to remember…” by habit after discussing any personal, professional, or spiritual issues, a person can take control of how they want the mind of their listening audience as well as their own to use reframing techniques and macro analysis to create an enhanced picture of what any social encounter or communication between two or more parties actually, in real-life practical application types of civil circumstances actually means.
If you have been abused, what’s important to remember is now you know both how never to act and who never to trust.
If you have been neglected or in any way mistreated by a person who you know — whether you like them or love them or a pack of toxic peers has treated you like a scapegoat — realize what is important to remember is NOW YOU KNOW.
Now you know that if they are not sitting in the room with you and you are still breathing (or imagining you are) that you survived. You were stronger than them. Better than them. More capable than them.
And you were never in social competition in any way with them that was even remotely real.
Socially competitive people are fiercely codependent.
You are who you decide to be.
Do you choose to be either?
If not, own your social and emotional decision. Be the change you want to see in all things related to hope, faith, and charity.
And, when the time comes for you to claim your seat at the proverbial afterlife table, realize that people who strive to be things like honest, accurate with tact, and socially direct…
The people who match what they say in public with what they think in private and act at all times in accordance with their word…
Understand those are the people who keep the world running.
Not folks who try to socially and spiritually hijack others into an endless repetition of completely nonsensical and health-destroying Narcissistic Abuse cycle so they can point and laugh at prey who power predators’ imaginary televisions with fictitious hamster wheels.
What’s important to remember is… whatever you say is important to remember.
Who are you going to be today?
It is up to you to decide your fate. At least according to Curly and a handful of surviving and thriving Narcissistic Abuse recovery advocates who are on the path to living a healthy lifestyle very much so like the one that so many Advocates have been successfully able to create for themselves.
Remember when Mitch Robbins says, “Hi Curly….” then he asks quite sincerely but with no malice intended, “[Kilt] anyone [implied tone of yet] today?”
When Curly replies, “The day ain’t over yet… ” he left the world with a wonderful cinematic example of how to decide who you are going to be and how to act on any given day.
But the most brilliant dialog perhaps in the film is the following exchanged between Crystal, playing a City Slicker, and Palance — playing basically the Gunsmoke version of his real-life self.
The classic movie dialogue goes as follows:
Curly : Do you know what the secret of life is?
[holds up one finger]
Curly : This.
Mitch : Your finger?
Curly : One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.
Mitch : But, what is the “one thing?”
Curly : [smiles] That’s what *you* have to find out.
