Living The Way Forward IX To Change Your Methods...Importantly, Following Through

Those who fear getting left behind are the ones getting left behind unless they change. Fear is not only irrational, it is destructive full stop. Empathy becomes sympathy and sympathy is the enemy to change. Sympathy devolves into pity which is its own gravitational force: which specializes in only one direction, that is, the active component of bringing one [you, specifically] down. 

To further clarify: Sympathy [masquerading] as empathy places others feelings on a pedestal. Creating space for feelings to become a focal point and highlighted as the utmost important factor in a person's situational-circumstance increases your gullibility and stretches your resources thin. Know when to keep your distance -be firm and stay firm. Empathy is flexible, but not a rope to extend yet receive back as a noose. Sympathy as sympathy is simply feeling helpless and not attempting to help change the situation. Or, more often than not -remarking about the situation but not doing anything more than that. Yes -presence is enough -but when it comes to moving forward with the one who needs support, presence can become more a burden. Pity is simply the epitome of de-evolution. Accept your D'award. In other words, the entire point of empathy is to have and use both logic (groundedness) and feelings (connection) not do away with one or the other or overuse one at the expense of the other. 

"Follow your heart" is such a losing strategy. This creates an illusion that your perspective is the only perspective even though you know you may be wrong. It presupposes you should trust in yourself at all times; it creates a rift between trusting others enough to know one or two of them have your best interests at heart -and even when their words don't mean anything [as is countlessly proven] at the very least to take some of their advice and combine it with other pieces of advice. It's not even to say to simply take advantage of them and only see them as good opportunistically. 
The insidiousness of this philosophy is 'Do what thou wilt'-lite -a parent-child philosophic system of each other.This isn't even to say that trusting yourself is always wrong, either. It IS to say not to advise people of this insidious philosophy willy-nilly. It's as you think religion should be -kept to yourself but lived out as a personal choice, you individual you. 

Speaking of 'good vs. evil' there is no such thing. There is no such thing as black and white vs seeing the world in color for the 'degree of goodness and badness' is a lie you convince yourselves of to make you have 'purpose' or seem progressive in the pursuit of making you feel less guilty about your choices. That your actions make you 'good' or 'bad' or that your intent behind those actions are the driving forces and should be consequential even though they don't always coincide (i.e. having good intentions but horrific outcomes). Everyone's bad, there's just varying degrees of acceptance of how much evil one is willing to tolerate or partake in or judge others with. 

The fact is, it's about what you follow: Truth or lies. People don't follow good because it's 'good', it's because there's truth there.The truth is the goodness that you are attracted to and seek out. However, you temper it down with such a mediocre, generic term as 'good' -too abstract and subjective. Even you don't know what that means or how to live it. You can be swayed by bad things because quite frankly, you can talk yourself into/out of anything especially if it excuses your actions and grants false grace [a mini relief and an avoidance to responsibility and consequence]. Not choosing a side is a choice to remain comfortable in your lostness. Not choosing a side has an unimaginable impact wherein you are the villain of the story -not the tragic hero. 

The entire deceit of 'good' versus 'evil' only scratches the surface. Any of its variants still misnames and incorrectly, purposefully misleads -for fighting valiantly even for the "right" reason within the wrong context, is still wrong. There will always be battles -while the real war is waged and won in secret. The actual war is neither violent nor bloody -its [consequence; aftermath] created reality is our experience. It's not as simple as stop fighting -not because that's an incorrect answer, or because it's "impossible", but because they don't stop: for us to stop *or have what is an ignorant idealism of peace* would keep us perpetually behind. 

Peace isn't ~no war ~ but JUSTICE. That necessarily means perpetual war -or as a disservice, to water it down: ongoing labor to uplift others against tyranny. But people are too predictable. This is why tyranny in any iteration *wins. Change yourself. Others will follow. As an important follow up to that -if people don't change, don't force them to, just leave the option open for it. There's no such 'perfect' model and that is erroneously what people are searching for and molding themselves after while coercing others to join. --Justice works not because of certainty of law but because the uncertainty of its application to exceptions.