I’ve been thinking a lot lately and also gardening (my poor crochet and craft and art projects have all been so neglected!), which hasn’t left much time for blogging. I’m still healing from Carol Ann’s passage and last night as I was trying to drift off to sleep, stoned on Benadryl (not for the stonage sake, but because I had a massive headache), I had a mini-ephiphany: Morrissey was right, it takes guts to be gentle and kind. Carol Ann was invariably kind to me. That doesn’t mean that she was a sop who was easily walked-upon. She told me some hard truths that I needed to hear and that took guts. And her kindness extended to everyone I saw her interact with. Yet I feel like too many people didn’t see what gloriousness she added to the world. I fear that I didn’t fully see it until she was gone.
I’ve recently seen several friends being kinda jerks on social media and I have certainly seen people I don’t know act like horrors on message boards and comment threads. I feel like it gave me a skewed perception of the world in some respects, because I had almost started to believe that the anonymity of the internet and the sort of mediated space of places like G+, Facebook and Twitter brought out the “true nature” of people…the ugly nature. Luckily, I remembered that I am a sociologist at heart and that the idea of a “true nature” is ridiculous to my way of thinking.
I need to remember that as social constructs, G+ and Facebook and Twitter and blogs and comment threads are what we make them. I’m going to spread some hard truths when I see people behaving in ways that would undoubtedly make them ashamed if they looked at themselves in the mirror while they said that. If they wouldn’t be ashamed by their actions, it’s probably time for us to part ways. It takes guts to be gentle and kind. I’m going to start working on that strength, even as I start trying to work on physical strength, too. Not because I’m trying to reach Nirvana, but because we all deserve a gentler world.
