“Are you doing for the cause OR for the applause?

Yesterday was a good day and a lot of the conversations had been around societies perceptions and the narrative that if something is wrong, unjust, not fair that someone else MUST be to blame. A lot of my work of late has been about challenging these perceptions, assumptions trying to provide and share information, hopefully, to enable people to question their assumptions, to make more informed choices, which in turn will hopefully change the narrative that “someone else is always to blame”. Whilst making our morning coffee Helen my mate came out with a classic line “ Work for the cause, not for applause” the hairs on my arms stood on end, I was like YES, YES. Helen who was quite chuffed with her statement quickly went to check it out to see if she had, in fact, heard it somewhere before or had just come up with the quote of the century, sadly she didn’t.

“Work for a cause, not for applause. Live life to express, not to impress. Don’t strive to make your presence noticed just make your absence felt.” Author Unknown, well hats of to the unknown author, whoever you are!

There are people out there in particular all over social media using the narrative that someone is to blame, but never fear “they will solve it, they have the answers” and people actually buy into the narrative that this one person, who thinks they are fucking Jesus resurrected from the dead, is capable of solving everyone’s life’s problems and shit! Now at one time, I would have been sat here ranting, swearing acting like a demonic nutter having a meltdown like the possessed child, Regan, in the film The Exorcist.

Now I’m no defeatist in fact I am far from it, but I am a realist. No it isn’t nice, its not fair seeing people on the streets, nor is it nice to see a loved one slowly killing themselves from addiction, its shit when you see someone who is in an abusive relationship, its tragic that in this day and age that people are having to use food banks for the basic necessities and its not just here in this country, fuck me there are people fleeing war zones with the hope of a better, safer life and then they rock up here and are faced with different kind of attacks, just because they have a different, faith, wear different clothes or aren’t the same colour. Seriously I could go on and on and on… but life is and can be fucking proper shit and unfair! But that is the reality #shithappens

But what I do believe and what inspires me every day that despite all the shittiness and the shit narrative, that there are people who are under the social media radar who recognise life’s injustices, who are willing to do some simple acts of kindness for another person, a stranger, just because its the right thing to do and they do it without no expectation of getting something back in return, they do it because they are just simply good people. 

They do what they do because they might have been in the same shitty lifeboat at one time or another in their life, they managed to escape and want to help others to do the same. They are turning their shitty life experiences into good. They are helping to change the blame, shame “life’s shit” narrative into a positive one. 

Awards and recognition are great, I’ve been there myself chasing it the glory recognition that I have done something good, but the best reward comes from recognising myself,

Searching for someone else’s approval or recognition as a measure of self-worth takes away your ability to measure your own self-worth.

So ask yourself whatever you do “Are you doing for the cause OR for the applause?

Reet i’m off to do some work on the book, the book i am writing for me, have a great weekend, love Fordy x

4 thoughts on ““Are you doing for the cause OR for the applause?

    1. thank you Kathryn, that means a lot, this writing ya life stuff is harder than it seems x hope you are keeping well and we must catch up soon

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