Both live inside you. That’s the truth worth sitting with.

The shrew isn’t just a woman with a sharp tongue — that’s an old, unfair shorthand. The shrew is a posture. It’s the part of us that wakes up already annoyed, that meets inconvenience with indignation, that turns every small frustration into a grievance worth broadcasting. The shrew argues to win, not to understand. The shrew exhausts the room and then wonders why people keep their distance.

We’ve all been there. Some days more than others.

The saint isn’t a statue or a stained-glass figure either. The saint is your neighbor who stays calm when things go sideways. It’s the colleague who delivers hard news without cruelty. It’s the person in line ahead of you who treats the overwhelmed cashier like a human being. Quiet. Direct. Kind — not because life is easy, but in spite of the fact that it isn’t.

Both attitudes are available to you.

Choose the shrew and you’ll feel briefly powerful — righteous, even — and then hollow. People will judge harshly instead of trusting you. Walls go up. Doors quietly close.

Choose the saint and something different happens. Not perfection. Not passive acceptance. But a kind of inner steadiness that actually draws people toward you. Respect builds. So does your own self-regard.

The choice isn’t between being weak or being strong.

It’s the choice you have between being someone who corrodes the room and someone who steadies it. One who builds trust, decency, and goodness, not one who poisons, disrupts and destroys.

How do you want to live today?

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

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This also matters – Good and Evil.

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