Hazard recognition training taught you that harmless-looking bottles carry substances that aren’t good for your health. When you’re in a shop, you don’t tell yourself that all products are benign, just because someone is selling them or making profit off of them.
What can alter the course of your life are much subtler poisons as well. For example, convictions and compulsions that you’ve outgrown, cult-like obedience, entitlement to approval or to loyalty — regardless of what you do or say and who gets harmed—, uncritical obsession with a famous figure, especially if that figure is cruel, or bombs countries and calls for a celebration (of horrors!), a fetish with mental illness (in the gender you fancy), a history of bad choices and a cluelessness about who the chooser was, habitual self-deception, corrosive behaviour coupled with lack of remorse, and so on… In so many ways, intangible poisons that people don’t remove from their homes and close circle can be as or more durable and damaging than a lot of substances.
I’ve influenced more people than I noticed at the moment. It’s usually at some reunion years or decades later that they tell me “You were the first to know. You were the first to distance yourself from something I realized later was bad for me, too. I thought of you when I claimed my own mind. It was your example that gave me the courage”… to step back, to reevaluate the situation, to find an exit plan.. “You were the first to introduce me to better judgment”… “The shock on your face told me that I was going to clean up my act, too.” … Yes, it’s a red thread. I appreciate the feedback even when it’s late and I don’t recall that anything big was happening, or just recall being at parties with this person, not in an overly serious mood, talking about deep or thought-provoking topics. I’m glad to learn even late that some took my example as the green light to remove toxic influences from their life. That is great, and I’ll keep serving in that manner.
Mind you, you can remove many noxious things from your daily life without outrage. Quiet detachment is as powerful, in many situations safer, and energy-saving. In the early stages of decontamination, do not assume that you will free anyone from their suffering. Haughty acts boomerang. Freeing yourself or anyone else with indignation, pomp or the need to prove how right you are defeats the purpose. When you need to give yourself grace, self-respect and respect are medicine.
1 March 2026
Nanda Jurela 