My mother said this many times to me growing up.

Somebody’d do something to me I didn’t like, call me names, write something bad about me, and I’d start to get mad and envision how I’d set the record straight – fight back – whatever I felt like to get even. Mom would hear me talking or see me thinking and say, “Don’t stoop to their level.”

Yes, why should I become like and do like what the other person did to me that I didn’t like? Sounds so basic but in a tiff, we can’t often see straight.

Personally, I think we need to shed a whole lot of the victim-hood mentality and stand up and be the bigger and better person. Be the example of how a good person responds to insult and berating. Be the example of how to go ahead with your life and make it a better life because of what you went through! Why not? Why shouldn’t you take the upper hand in your life? Why should you succumb to somebody else’s poor mouth and decisions? Of course it hurt, it was perhaps cruel, but we’re not in the eye for eye, tooth for tooth group. We’ve moved past that. I know it sounds tough, but it takes personal toughness to be the better person, and inside that’s really who we want to be.

Yes, we can triumph in adversity, see beauty in ugliness, and become peaceful in the storm. and it won’t always be easy, but we can learn and do it – little by little.

Let’s be the beacon on the hilltop – not fighting in the mud with accusers.

Step out of the mud. Don’t stoop to their level. That’s not who you are.