Stop bullying.

At the end of my work day, when there are only a few minutes left until I can leave and I don’t want to stop in the middle of something, I read the news online. I don’t particularly like reading the news, because there’s rarely anything happy to be found there. A few days ago was a perfect example.

The first headline that jumped out at me was about a teenager who killed herself in front of her family. She was a senior in high school and had been bullied for her weight - cyberbullied. No one had nerve enough to harass her in person. Instead, these cowards who thought they were so much better than she sent text messages and created Facebook pages to bully her. She killed herself because of words said by faceless people. 

Seriously? 

The article told of how her family pleaded with her to not pull the trigger, and with them there to witness it, she shot herself in the chest.

I can’t get that mental image out of my head. It’s been haunting me for a couple of days now, mainly because it ties in with the reason I’ve been avoiding Facebook. I’m disgusted with the way so many people I consider friends are behaving lately. Mostly it has been political comments, but there are so many other comments that make me wonder if anyone really thinks about what they’re saying anymore, especially when it is being said behind the safety of a computer screen.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with social media from the beginning. People speak their minds, exercising their freedom of speech, without a thought as to how others will react. What to you might seem a completely acceptable thing to say can hurt or anger someone else. Words are THE most painful weapons, because they cut silently, deeply and without witness.

Reading about a young life lost because of the pain caused by words got me to thinking…have I ever been a cyberbully? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that yes, I have. We’ve all been bullies. Think about it…have you ever written a scathing review of a business on Yelp? Left negative feedback on eBay or Amazon that was maybe a little more harsh than it had to be? How many Facebook posts have you written about the stupidity of people who voted differently than you in the recent election? 

Would you have the nerve to say the exact same things face to face?

How many times have you left vague replies to a friend’s post, clearly implying you disagree or are judging that person? Have you ever got into a heated argument with a total stranger in the replies to a friend’s post? Did it make you feel superior to that person to tell them your truth?

That is an important part of all this by the way. Your truth. Not the truth, even though that might be what you have convinced yourself. Everyone has their own truth. 

Example: I am not a Christian. I do not believe in the Bible, Jesus, God. None of it. So when you post things like, “Thanks be to God” over the fact that your child survived his/her cancer, do you stop to think how those of us whose children didn’t survive might feel? God chose to save your child, but chose to let mine die? Is that the message? If so, this god is a huge asshole. That is my truth. 

Another religious comment that seems innocent is, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” What you should be saying is, “Jesus is the reason for your season,” because he is not the reason for mine. The things that I celebrate this time of year have nothing to do with Christianity. They have to do with my truths.

Those are fairly innocuous examples. They anger me, but they don’t harm me. I’m not insulted by them; merely disgusted with their presumptuousness. Recently though, the comments on politics have reached the point of (what I consider to be) cyberbullying. When you lambaste an entire group of people because they voted differently than you, calling them names or saying they’re all ignorant, uneducated…stupid, does it occur to you that not everyone who will see it agrees with you? Does it occur to you that you are criticizing people you supposedly consider “friends”? Do you care?

We speak without thought or tact, because we don’t have to see the reaction of others to our words. That is bullying. If you only feel better about yourself when you’re bringing someone down, you are a bully. I grew up with someone like that and it took nearly 50 years before I was able to say, “No more!” and cut that person from my life. Lives are being lost because words are being said without care. 

I had no choice but to watch my son die. He wanted to live - more than anything, he wanted to live! Yet I still had to helplessly watch him die. The parents of this young girl also had to helplessly watch their child die, but it didn’t have to be that way! We need to stop spewing hate and judgement. We need to be spreading acceptance, tolerance and love. We especially need to be teaching our children to do the same.

A bullet to the chest, as she cried about not being able to deal with it all anymore. How is this the world we live in now? How? Because we are creating that world with ever word we wield. How dare we use those weapons so carelessly?

I love seeing posts about your child’s baseball team winning, new jobs, kids in Halloween costumes, couples in ugly sweaters…I want to be there to cheer you on as you fight tough life battles. I cry with you when you suffer a loss. I don’t want to be there when you post something vague, seeking attention without explanation. I don’t want to “like” a post where you are criticizing an entire group of people all because you don’t agree with them. I don’t want to help you feel better about yourself by bringing someone else down.

Social media should be fun. 

Day 1, No Facebook, Thoughts on "Friends"

So, the experiment begins...Day 1

I deactivated my Facebook account today. Actually, I deactivated all three of them. Scary to think I had three, although one I never really used and another was my "military wife" account. But still...slave to social networking much?

There are people on Facebook I will miss, and there are certainly train wrecks that I will miss watching. There are "friends" who will probably not even notice my absence. It's a sad realization, but events of the past few weeks had already shown me that some people who I thought were legitimate, real life friends really aren't. Life is too short to waste time with friendships that only exist when it is convenient for the other person, but not when I need a friend.  

I've noticed a trend recently in people. So many seem to live in a universe that revolves around them, and the people they consider "friends" are only that when they can do something for the person at the center of the universe. They don't consider the other person's feelings, only their own. They certainly don't take into consideration whether what they are saying is hurtful to anyone else. I'm sure at some point I was that person as well.

Now, imagine each of our universes as a circle. What I want for myself is also convenient for Friend A, therefore our circles overlap in a happy way. Many other Friends overlap with my universe as well. But Friend A begins to get so caught up in her own universe, always talking about herself and her own life and accomplishments. She no longer thinks of my life in any way. Our circles are no longer the perfect venn diagram, overlapping symbiotically, yet we are trying to maintain the friendship. That is Facebook. Connections are made, "friendships" created, at a time when our circles overlap. But when those same circles become disconnected, we still hang on. It makes no sense.

So I am disconnecting my circle from 194 others. Those who know me well and wish to can still keep in touch with me. I gave everyone my email address a couple of days before deactivating my account, so hopefully those who wanted it wrote it down. Those who have been hanging on to our friendship even though it is past its prime can rest easy in the knowledge that they didn't have to deal with the awkwardness of unfriending me. I am looking forwarding to working on building more meaningful friendships through real correspondence and conversation, insteal of voyeuristic socializing through a computer screen.  Who knows?  Maybe I will start a trend and save a million postal workers' jobs!  I doubt it, but it's a nice thought.

Look Up.

Do I really have 194 friends? Can someone even be called "friend" if the only interaction I have with them is through my computer? Can life be lived without social networking?

Truth?  

I don't have 194 friends. I don't even truly know that many people. But I have 194 people who, for whatever reason, want to know what I have to say on Facebook.

Can someone I've never met in person, and who I only interact with online, be called a friend? Absolutely yes. I know people in just this way who have been more supportive than people I was born and raised with.

Can life be lived without social networking? Well, I am about to try. Starting Saturday, May 10th, I'm shutting down my social networking accounts. Instead of looking at my iPad every evening, I'm going to look at my family. Or maybe the television. But I'll do it with my family.

This should be interesting.

The Biggest Loser in the Social War

Always look at the bright side, eh?

Ok . . . so this is me, looking at the bright side of getting up at 5:00am to color my hair.  Since I gave up using chemical dyes and switched to all-natural henna to color my hair, I’ve decided that I would rather sacrifice sleep and get up early so I can leave the henna on my hair for three hours without losing half my day off because I have a head full of mud.

But oh how nice sleep would be right now.

Oh well.  Since I’m up, I might as well do a little writing - something I haven’t been doing enough of lately.

Today is my dad’s 79th birthday.  The importance of this is that his own father died at 78.  I think that is a major feat, don’t you?  My mother and father are still alive, as are my husband’s mother and father, so I don’t know yet what it is like to lose a parent.  But having watched others I know experience this loss, I think a common theme - or maybe a better word is a common goal - is to live past the age our parents lived to be.  As if somehow the age a parent died is this wall that we all must reach and then climb over.  The beauty of my dad turning 79 today is that my “wall” is still in motion, still moving further away from me.  I can still live my life without thinking that every day puts me “one day closer to [insert age here].”

Kind of a selfish way to look at it I guess.  But an honest one.  Because aren’t we all a little selfish?  The world does revolve around me, doesn’t it?

Since I started working a few months ago, I have taken a break from my online world.  Social media, blogging, and emailing have become something I do on the weekends, and then only if there is absolutely nothing else to do.  Before I started working I found the “look at me, look at me” attitude of many people online to be slightly annoying.  Now?  It’s unbearable.  And yet, there are an equal number who aren’t constantly trying to be The Most Popular, The Funniest, or The Most Needy person on [insert social media site here], but are just saying, “Hi, how are ya?”  They are the gems of the world!  The ones who can write a post that isn’t cryptic, isn’t begging for praise, isn’t inflicting guilt . . . those are the people I now appreciate so much more than I used to.  Those are the people I aspire to be!

Of course, I understand that some people don’t have anyone to talk to outside of their online social world.  Some people need the constant reassurance that only 57 “likes” and 23 comments can give.  Some people are only happy if they are letting you know that they have it so much worse than you do.  There are wars going on all around the world that people should be following, should be caring about, and yet I can get online at any moment and witness the collective hours put in every day on a different kind of war.

My child had cancer!

Yeah?  Well, my child HAS cancer still.

My child died from cancer at age 17.

My child died at 12.

MINE died at 1!!!

I use cancer as the example here because that is the world that I am a part of.  But the same war goes on in other circles as well.  Who had the worst marriage, the worst commute to work, the worst hair day.  Whose weather is the worst today.  It’s all a game of who has it worse than someone else.

So who wins?  Because that is how it seems, that there is a winner somewhere in all of this.  Who wins at having the most tragic life?  

I want to be the loser.  I want to be the person whose life is so pleasant, so easy, so ordinary, that I become the biggest loser in The Social War.  I want to look at the challenges I have faced, the losses I have experienced, the bad days that we all occasionally have and see the bright side.  I wasn’t able to do that a few months ago.  I was caught up in the war as well, competing for the prize.  It’s amazing how much perspective can be gained just by taking time off and enjoying the good things in life though.

Who knew?