Hello everyone, I hope you’re having a wonderful day! In my current WIP, I have put lots and lots of fun motivational quotes and encouraging phrases, as well as some deeper, ‘in my feels’ kind of quotes, and I’ve decided to highlight some of them, talk about them and ‘analyze’ them if you will.

1|| “Emotional pain is always the hardest to fix. You can escape torture, but you can’t escape your own mind.”

This is a quote by one of my MC’s, Hila Rami Hellin. He is talking about another character who bears a lot of mental baggage. This quote touches on a very stigmatized topic in society: mental health. One of my book’s main themes is mental health and all these various mental ‘issues’ for lack of a better term. This quote touches on how emotional/mental pain is more challenging to ‘fix’ than physical pain. You can escape torture, your limbs can heal, your headache will go away, but depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, and all these other problems won’t always go away so easily or quickly.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in your own mind and succumb to the thoughts that tear you down. It’s so easy to let those thoughts run rampant through your mind rather than trying to control them. You can’t escape those thoughts that will run through your mind. You can’t escape the distraught thinking that can tear you apart, but you can accept them, control them, counter them with a positive affirmation that will remind you that you are good enough, you are beautiful enough, you simply are enough.

Now, I understand that not everyone is religious or specifically a Christian. Still, on those days where even those positive affirmations can’t heal your broken heart, you have a Father up in Heaven who will never hesitate to love you, to care for you, to remind you that you are His child, which means you are valuable, no matter what ‘issues’ or ‘problems’ you have.

2 || “You just have to accept that pain will always be there, but so will hope… there’s always something worth fighting for.”

This is a cluster of quotes from a secondary, perhaps tertiary character, named Sonel. It focuses on the word: hope. Hope is such an essential aspect of life. We have hope in big things like our futures, our dreams, our aspirations, and we have little hopes like hoping there’s a snowstorm, so school’s canceled, or hoping that your sports team wins. No matter what you’re hoping in, it’s hope.

The first ‘section’ of the quote explains that there will always be pain, suffering, death, heartbreak, whatever-other-sad-things in life. Always. I hate to be the one to break it to you, don’t shoot the messenger. But, just like how pain will always be there, hope will too, God will too, love will too. There will always be light in times of darkness. We just have to find it, and when we do, we need to focus on it. Focus on God, focus on that hope that things will get better. God will be right there, holding your hand through the pain. Always.

The second ‘section’ talks about how there is always something worth fighting for in the midst of the pain. Throughout any painful stage of life, you can look forward to the hope of your future goals, the love of family and friends, the smiles of your children or nieces or friends’ children. There is always something to keep fighting for and hold on for. Keep fighting so that one day you can look back and be able to say, ‘I did it.’

3 || “The only fool is the one who hides his tears.”

Can I get ‘toxic masculinity’ for 500? This quote touches on that very topic. I feel as though this topic isn’t spoken about very often in today’s day and age. A few months ago, a hashtag was circulating that read ‘bring back manly men,’ and there’s this overall idea that men cannot show intense emotions other than anger or they can’t be sensitive, or ‘act feminine.’ First of all, whoever said that emotions/feelings were feminine? Yeah, women are naturally more sensitive, but that doesn’t make you more feminine if you show them. Also, why is being feminine seen as a bad thing?

Second of all, we are humans. Guess what humans have? EMOTIONS!! We have these neat little parts in our brain that react according to different scenarios, words, and actions. If that scenario, word, action, etc., makes you sad, then it’s okay to cry. In fact, it’s completely normal to cry. As a society, we cannot condemn men to think that they cannot show emotions or cry or have human feelings just because they’re men. We can have soft boys, sensitive boys, boys who enjoy things other than the ‘manly’ power tools, weapons, sports, and so on.

Long story short: this quote says that if you try to hide your tears to show others that you’re manly and too tough to cry, you’re a little silly. It’s okay to have emotions; it’s okay to feel. We’re humans, and it’s about time we start validating emotions, a.k.a. one of the most human things about us.

Wowza, that was a lot! I kinda didn’t mean to write mini devotionals or rants about toxic masculinity, but here we are. I hope you found some of these quotes as interesting as I have, and I hope you can take something away from them. Like always, keep on inspiring folks and loving yourself!