Imagine to Remember

⁣Many women are in contradiction with their good girl programming. Good girl programming has very little to do with genuine goodness or morality. It is really about a strict adherence to a set of rules. It tells us that if we do as it says we will be rewarded and avoid pain, and even moreso we will watch the bad girls punished for their bad behavior. But many of us live with the contradiction of programming and what we know or at least suspect in our hearts is really true. Good girl programming is concerned with the appearance of things and not their reality, and becoming aware of this lie creates disquiet in the body and in the spirit. ⁣
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Good girls often become upset when they see bad girls seemingly succeeding, getting away with things for which they should be shunned. They can become jealous or resentful of the bad girls who simply have the nerve to do what they long to do but cannot. Sometimes the bad girl gets the man, the job, and all the nice shiny things. This enrages the good girl, because she is really the one who deserves all these things on account of her very obvious and carefully curated veneer of goodness. I don’t mean to imply that breaking the rules is somehow liberating but rather that sincerity of intention is everything. ⁣
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The bad girls suffer too, and the good girls relish in what she understands to be justice taking its course. Sometimes the good girl does all the right things and doesn’t get the reward she was promised or maybe she gets the all shiny things only to realize they did not provide what she really desired. For many women this creates deep bitterness. This is not to say men don’t suffer from a similar programming but that their positioning, power and access gives them much more room for rebellion and adventure, moreso in some cultures. I’ve worn both of these identities at different times in my life and I can say that neither of them gave me what I really needed. We are all trapped in personas and performances and long to just be freely. And whether that is entirely possible I don’t know but if there is a way out it will come through commitment to what is real and true, and morality for its own sake, for God’s for the sake of one’s own soul, to respond to the higher calling.⁣
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