I really can't believe I almost called someone an asshole on the Internet tonight. Someone I don't know. Someone I have never met and will never meet. Someone whose opinion is of absolutely no consequence to my life.
But he was an asshole. And by the time I "walked away" from the situation, I was incensed - and angry. And here's the thing - I was JUSTIFIABLY angry at this man, because he was an asshole.
What was this man doing all this time? Did he CARE that I thought he was an asshole (heck, he didn't even seem to care that he WAS an asshole)? I'm guessing he was sound asleep, wrapped in a blanket, probably dreaming of how much money he could win if the Patriots beat the 4 1/2 point spread. I, on the other hand, was tense and anxious - my stomach in knots over my totally rational anger at this man for being so very ignorant and nasty.
My point, and yes, I have one - is that I was about to be unkind to someone I'd never met.
And then I went back to my own "wall," where I had posted a status about a celebrity's apparent suicide. And the comments following it - from MY friends - were unkind - about someone they'd never met.
A man committed a crime. Before he could be sentenced, he committed suicide - leaving behind a family, including a mother, who I can pretty much guarantee you would not only rather attend her son's sentencing than his funeral, but is probably inconsolable with guilt and grief - over his crime, his pain, and his choice to end his life. We're mothers. It's ALWAYS our fault.
And yet, no empathy for the parents. No "this man must have been in some severe pain to not only commit the crime he did, but also to end his own life." Just an immediate metaphorical jump to "good riddance." Unkind, cruel, sarcastic, snarky, and mean words - words this man cannot see, being dead, and words that offer no comfort to his family - or any mother reading them who may have had to deal with the death or suicide of a child or their child committing a crime. And here's a newsflash - while his suicide MAY have brought some comfort to the victims OF his crime (and even that's questionable), the unkind words from strangers on the Internet did not.
People have told me frequently that putting negative energy out into the world brings negative energy back to you. As an angry and volatile person, consistently bound and determined to WIN, to make other people SEE, I have often found myself at an impasse. Even before the Internet, to me, being right was ALWAYS more important than being kind.
I think of some of the comments I see (and even say) regularly. "I hate people." Really? We HATE people? We live in a world full of them. How unhappy are we if, as a blanket statement, we can say we HATE them? People say the word "love" is overused. "I love my job." "I love shrimp." We say "I love you" too often, I'm told. But how often do we say we "hate" something? How many kinder ways can we say something displeases us without saying we "hate" it? I say "I love you" every time I hang up the phone with my husband, my sister, my children, and my best friend. Every single time. Because why the hell does it diminish the word "love" by using it a lot? Isn't the idea to spread it around?
As many of you know, I have been having a lot of unexplainable health issues lately. How many of them can be attributed to the stress and anxiety I feel over things on social media that have nothing to do with me? How many of my headaches are actually caused by my gritting my teeth when someone says something I consider to be ridiculous - or inaccurate? How many times do I "get into it" with someone to whom I have shown proof of my position - or from whom I have asked for proof of theirs - resorting to throwing up link after link "proving my point."
So - in an effort to reclaim my own sanity, I am deactivating my Facebook account for Lent. I will be deleting Messenger from my phone as well and will not be available through either of those platforms from February 14-April 1.
I'm not telling anyone this because I want attention or someone to ask me "not to go away." There are people who use this as their only method to communicate with me. If you are one of these people and do not have my personal email and/or cell number, please reach out to me, via Facebook, BEFORE February 14, and I will send it to you. I will still be accessible through email, the University, my phone, Joe, Instagram, and the occasional carrier pigeon. I rarely, if ever, Tweet, and I do not get notifications from Twitter, so indirectly, I'm giving that up as well.
But I'm doing this for me and for my own self-care. And believe me - it's not the political discussions, the actual facts and statistics, the news articles, or the very many rational arguments I see among people that care about how they impact others. I love when a discussion takes place on a friend's wall that ends with that friend thanking us all for participating and having civil, if not in agreement, discourse.
But that is happening rarely - and unfortunately, in a country that is so polarized and divided, so angry, with everyone - everyone - feeling such feelings of betrayal from politicians, entertainers, even their own friends or family - it is impossible to be on social media without seeing the unkindness, particularly in a society that honors schadenfreude.
Make no mistake, I am so far from perfect it's not funny, and I suspect I will be standing over the computer at 11:30 on March 31, anxiously awaiting the stroke of midnight so I can once again be entertained by all of you and posting pictures from my phone over the previous 46 days However, it is my hope that I will fill the time in this six weeks that I normally spend in the black hole of arguments with strangers with productive things. I have a list, but that's not important. What I WILL work on spending my time doing is being kind. In all I say and do. Call it the Golden Rule, call it Jesus's commandment, the Ten Commandments, karma, doing the next right thing - whatever you want to call it, it is my hope that, at the end of this time, I will be a nicer person. To everyone.
I leave you with this blog I found - I was looking for the exact quote, and I found it interesting that it was not a directive, but rather an observation - not "go and do such and such," but "when you do such and such, you are CHOOSING to be kind." Choose to be kind.
And overused or not - I love you all. Peace.
PS - the conversation from last night? I chose not to engage any longer. I did NOT call him an asshole.
When given the choice between being right and being kind, always choose kind
