Selling Out – 5 Minute Freewrite

This a response to today's freewrite prompt by @mariannewest. Our prompt word today is 'sellout.'

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What is a sellout? The word itself is considered an insult of the highest order, denoting somebody who has sacrificed their integrity, their principles, or their true feelings and desires for a perceived external reward: money, fame, notoriety, something of that nature. Politicians often fall into that category!

It has made me reflect on the many subtle ways that we can "sell out" on an everyday basis, denying our actual opinions, thoughts or emotions for the sake of appeasing those around us, even when that is not in our best interest or theirs. Is there such a thing as a person who lives their life with absolute, complete integrity, never compromising on anything? Perhaps "compromising" wasn't the best word to use just there. To my mind, there is a great difference between compromising and "selling out", in the sense that the former is done to try and reach the best possible solution for all parties involved in a conflict or problem of some kind, whereas the latter is very much associated with abandoning one's own heartfelt principles for the sake of something that is far less valuable in the end – something like money or fame, as I mentioned earlier.

When I say that any external reward someone might gain by "selling out" is far less valuable than living our truth and being exactly who we are, what I mean is that something like money ultimately cannot be taken with us. At the end of our lives, we are left with nothing. We face into a mystery that cannot be explained and can never be understood (at least, not while we're alive). We cannot take anything with us: not the money we've earned, the fame we've gained, or the influential people we've impressed throughout our careers.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this ramble. I started out by musing about what the term "sellout" means, and look where it's brought me now: I'm sitting here pondering about the nature of death, and what might await us after we pass on! 😂 My five minutes are nearly up now, anyway ... so for what it's worth, that is my freewrite today. It's a topic I can expand upon at a later point. I'm finding that these freewrites have proven to be a fantastic way of brining up thoughts and ideas that I can work on in greater depth at another time. I'm so glad I started doing them! ❤️

P.S. – I love the picture I found just now to illustrate this post. I know that "stop selling, start helping" is, in fact, a sales tactic, but it kind of ties into what I think I was trying to say at the end of this post: essentially, that the money we gain will mean nothing to us at the very end of our lives, but the memories we have created by helping people, being there for them, and making a positive impact on their lives ... those memories will bring us strength and comfort.