Tsk. I remember back when I came into the fandom with enthusiasm and inspiration. I'm not going to go into what happened but lately I've been going back to where I was. See, it took more than just the show to really touch me. Had it appeared at a different point in my life, it'd be more likely that I'd have just brushed it to the side without giving it a chance just like I did when my then-gf brought up to me that the thing went viral on 4chan.

So what else was there when I had heard about the show and the fandom back in Aughust 2011? Well, a different world view was blossoming in me, one that doesn't for a change see people as selfish monsters and that I must employ various strategies to ensure that I do not end up being exploited. Going with the flow and living an almost invisible life seemed like the safest and least bumpy path to take. So what was this new world view? I could almost say that it's the opposite of what I had just described. I've started seeing people more as a tortured species that isn't beyond redemption. The seeds of goodness is in all of us but buried and smothered beneath the toxic baggage of suffering caused by absolute and relative deprivation which in turn subjects mothers and fathers to suffer, in turn having adverse effects on their children. I've been seeing the effects of this stunted development both in myself and in others to varying degrees. What I've wanted was to bring out the best in people whereas the social environment is largely responsible for bringing out the worst in us. Friendship is Magic showed up when right I had been assimilating all of this and from my eyes, it validated the idea because to me, it was an example (if a hypothetical one) of how it could work and what it may resemble. It's not that I was cynical and suddenly became much brighter in how I looked at things. It's just that this new information has been invalidating my cynicism and for a change giving much more fertile grounds for that seed of goodness in me to finally grow.

So as an experiment, I had tried to do away with all the guards I've put up and allow myself to be exposed as vulnerably as I could. Unfortunately, in the long run, this set me up for getting hurt and as it happened, all of what I had started doing was coming undone. Part of me has been relentlessly refusing to give everything up and regress all the way back to being a detached cynical smartass. The dissonance did make me suffer quite a bit partly because I've had a terrible time expressing it and I didn't know where I wanted to go from there other than not going back.

At around this time, it was decided that I would backtrack to where it all began. Gabor Maté, James Gilligan, Gordon Neufeld, Brené Brown, Richard Wilkinson, Lissa Rankin... Perhaps even FiM. They all inspired something positive in me. At no other point had I been inspired in such positivity towards our species before or since. And now, as I try to recuperate from letting my guard down, it may be time to look at it all again with different eyes waiting to make new interpretations and new connections to dots both old and new.