The Pick-Me Pedestal Vs GRIT
Let me preface this with no matter what industry you decide to involve yourself in or what niche, there will always be people who subscribe to some form of elitism. The “I’m not like the other girls” attitude is unfortunately has not missed the spiritual community no matter how “out of place” that attitude is. Unlike my other posts, this is not necessarily debunking anything, but I think it’s important to know so you don’t A) fall into this category yourself and B) Avoid being rage-baited over someone else’s egoism.
The Pick-Me Pedestal is what I call the illusion self-subscribed importance. To engage their ego in making them feel different, unique, and overall “better than” even if it’s just one person. In the spiritual sense the most prevelant jargon I hear is the concept of “Chosen Ones”. The concept of everything in spirituality being innately exclusive is BS. There are things that can be exclusive like closed practices. There are also things that are objectively true, like not everyone has to be spiritual or religious or develop their gifts and even provide them as a service. These are mostly choices and or systems of regulation.
My point here is that most things do not operate this way where they are doomed to be strictly black or white, not even DNA is that definitive. I’d like to draw the parallel to “natural born talent’ and success. People often like to write off effort as talent, but if you look at those who excel in their fields they never say “I just wake up and it’s easy!” that’s where GRIT comes in. GRIT is loosely defined as a combination of passion and perseverance for a long-term goal as well as a testimony to courageous strength in character, (Google, Definitions from Oxford Languages). Even if you are talented (synanomous with being inclined to succeed, but not promised) in something there still needs to be a practice to hone and develop typically favorable results. Even talented people can “lose their touch” if there is nothing else being built upon, making someone who is deemed less talented exceed their progression.
With this in mind, most of the chatter of people being “chosen” or so far above others is in my perception, backhanded. To those who have committed themselves to a path and practice without being inclined and to those who are gifted a “leg up” either intrinsically or resourcefully who have also put in considerable amount of effort to maintain what they have or to progress it. Which is also why I don’t believe or subscribe to any of the discourse of practices being “trendy” (warning concise tangent ahead).
In the Black community [dread]Locs were being “trendy”, people say spirituality, cosmetic surgeries like BBLs, certain beauty industries like lash techs, and even manifestation/witchcraft have all had their fair share of influx do to acceptance (which is what usually happens when things trend). I never understood why people got so upset knowing that recieving something doesn’t equal maintaince or results. Surgeries need to be maintained through regimen, spiritual practices still have structure in order to be functional, and even locs still need time and patience for the hair to develop even with the “shortcut” (extensions). Tangent over!
In all effort and tenacity aka GRIT is what promises results regardless of a leg up (talent or resource), not that everything in the world people find interest in needs to have been ordained to greatness by birthright or some subjective rubric of elitism. To me that mentality serves the purpose of hiding insecurity and discouraging others from attaining a piece of their own success. I hope people don’t take this out of context or try to use this for something that is overtly disrespectful to a practice/industry.
