You Need Toxic People

Daily Meditation #431–5/2/2023

Growing up you had your mother who showed you gentleness, kindness, and some manners.
Your father taught you discipline, determination, and stoic grit.
Your teachers, neighbors, or churchfolk maybe educated you in other good behaviors.

You have had so very many wonderful people through your life teach you through the examples they set.

And yet, you have been told to always cut the toxic people out of your life.

Which you absolutely should! Don’t tolerate spoiling your time overmuch with those who wish you ill or are evil to you.

However, you need the toxic people.

You need their betrayals.
You need their unrepaid borrowing.
You need their gossiping on you.

Because — like your mother or father — they also set an example…
Of how we ought not to be.

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These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”