I wanted a perkier thought for today, but this one wants to be said.
If you backtrack a bit, you’ll see Day 2/365 is my movie poster for the year: It’s a Gas, Gas, Gaslit World. It was supposed to be funny, but I think it’s a bit #toosoon for it to really land as humor.
Gaslights are funny because we most often see them as nonsensical behavior in other people, but rarely spot the same dynamics in ourselves. This results in a bit of a wandering definition/understanding of the word itself.
To some, a gaslight is a clever lie. To others, it is a bit of marketing that doesn’t fulfill its promise. But a gaslight is not so small as either of those things. It is an externally installed belief causing a person to distrust their own judgment and defer to someone else — usually a tyrant in their life — to be considered competent or sane.
Gaslights and the people who instill them are quite insidious.
And I’m guessing anyone reading this right knows this, but this really wanted to be the thought for the day, so I share it now.
May we all find and remove them from our lives.
