Be Above It

The theme of this post is something of a divergence from my usual posts about running, but it is a lesson that has been driven home to me by the experiences I have had and the people I have met as a result of running, so I figured it was at least a little relevant on this blog.
"People are going to hate you."  These words were some of the first I heard upon arriving back in Utah after my failed two-year experiment with Montana State, and they made an appearance a few short weeks later from an individual who began our short weekend trip as a stranger, and strangely one of the first lessons I learned just minutes after my finish at nationals.  Regardless of whether you are fast or slow, weak or strong, foolish or intellectual.  Whether they know every word of your story, or none of it at all.  People will hate you because of the things they've heard about you, true or not.  They will hate you for not fulfilling expectations they placed on you without your knowledge, or for pursuing the dreams that fill your waking hours with reckless abandon.  They will hate you for loving too much or not enough or for choosing the wrong person to care for.  They will hate you for your successes because they don't see the efforts that went into them, and they will hate you for your failures because they don't see the devastation that comes with them.
But...this is not on you.  The beautiful thing in all of this hate is that nothing dictates that you must shoulder the burden of accepting responsibility for it.  Of course, one should always strive to be able to recognize when they are in the wrong and make amends, but so long as you are living a life that you can be proud of, a good life, then let go of others' views on you.  Be unashamedly who you are.  Don't cower at the thought that your boldness might cause someone to dislike you.  Don't turn down a chance at happiness because it isn't down the path another might have chosen you.  After one of no doubt many outbursts from me via Snapchat about heaven only knows what, team drama or the patriarchy or someone's sassy attitude or what have you, my friend Aidan offered some simple advice:  Be above it.  You can choose to spend your life suffocating under the knowledge that people exist in this world who do not care for you, or you can try to realize that their opinions of you do not degrade the truth of what you are.