We create many identities for ourselves.  We will be many different things in our lives—and we will be a different character at different times.  We will have to take up the role at certain times.  Right now, I’m in a villain-esque role with someone.  I’m not getting support from the higher ups in spite of being in the right.  And at this time, it’s becoming ever more clear that I will be named the villain no matter what I do, no matter what evidence I produce. I’m frustrated and aggravated and concerned that the implications at this point could have long term effects for me, but this is something I clearly have no control over. The fact will remain that someone’s perception will win out over the facts.  And that’s fine.  We are all the villain in someone’s story at some point.  We aren’t perceived the same way by every person we encounter.  But I don’t need to tolerate it—especially if it ISN’T true.  None of us need to tolerate it.  We can’t control how people perceive us or what they believe—and right or wrong the fact is they may believe we are the bad person.  We are still responsible for our own narrative and we are able to leave those circumstances. 

We do that by stopping the game.  We stop playing the game.  If it was never winnable in the first place, what is the point of even trying?  It’s ok to let go of a lost cause.  When people have their mind set on a specific definition of who we are, the sooner we realize it, the easier it is to adapt and move on.  The hardest part to swallow/accept is that it’s ok to be the villain in someone’s story.  We know our truth, we know THE truth of what happened and that’s all that matters.  We can literally experience the exact same thing and come away with to entirely different experiences.  The same is true for how we are perceived.  It’s our friends, the cat and the canary again.  Sometimes we are the cat and others we are the canary—and in either circumstance someone will favor the cat and someone will favor the canary.  We all have the capacity to be a monster to someone because, to the canary the cat is a monster. And we have no control over that definition.  Trying to be everything to everyone, trying to control how we are received and perceived is a complete waste of time and an impossible task.  So stop playing the game.

I used to think that if I couldn’t get my way, if someone didn’t see me in the light I wanted to be perceived in, then I was wasting my time.  I’ve learned that it’s only a waste of time if we don’t learn from it.  If we continue to force the point/issue after it’s over.  And the reality is, if our authentic self-expression is a threat to someone, that’s their problem.  That has nothing to do with us.  Why would we want to waste our time convincing people who we are when they’ve already made up their minds and defined us according to their story?  We have to learn to let it go.  Don’t let ego force us to try and make ourselves to appear a certain way. We will feel better the more we stay in our authentic selves and allow ourselves to shine through no matter what.  We can’t change someone’s definition of who we are, we can only be what is right, what we know in our hearts.