The ability to handle any and all situations? I beg to differ. Strength is being able to feel pain, recognize your powerlessness and more towards it without turning back, knowing that this too shall pass. God gives us so many opportunities to grow throughout our lives that it doesn’t surprise me when I’m put to the test. There are some that say our true strength lies in being ourselves. But who are we? How well do you know yourself? How often have you look in the mirror and recognized your true inner self? This is a daunting task. We are plagued with ideologies which guide us away from being who we really are.

I found this on Wikipedia “Ideology is a comprehensive set of normative beliefs, conscious and unconscious ideas, that an individual, group or society has.

An ideology is narrower in scope than the ideas expressed in concepts such as worldview, imaginary and ontology. [1]

Political ideologies can be proposed by the dominant class of society such as the elite to all members of society as suggested in some Marxist and critical-theory accounts. In societies that distinguish between public and private life, every political or economic tendency entails ideology, whether or not it is propounded as an explicit system of thought.

In the Althusserian sense, ideology is “the imaginary relation to the real conditions of existence”.”

We are imposed upon by the elite in society given extreme definitions. What we’re to look like, how we’re supposed to act, how we should love, what we should eat or not eat, and the list goes on. Who are we really?   To understand who we are we must first exam who we are not. We are not empty vessels waiting to be poured into. We are not mindless creatures living an unstable existence.