Blowing It All Away

I've encountered too many dark tunnels on Facebook and social media. I've tripped and fallen victim to the trap of disrespectful dialogues and personal attacks. Keyboards have become weapons of human destruction. How painful it is to witness and endure what lurks from behind infinite screens?! Flippant meanness, grudges, jealousy, and bile inflict misery on friends and strangers alike. Constant tug-of-war inevitably leads us down dark and lonely tunnels with no light on the horizon. 

People are terrified of death but I believe that more and more people have developed a fear of living. You can't cure your pain or fear unless you’re willing to live through it. Happiness is an accomplishment especially in challenging times. Instant information, literally at the tips of our fingers, are both a curse and a blessing. In the end, what really matters? Have you ever hushed a child or ignored a person, who is right in front of you, in order to attend to a glass screen? As of 2017 - who hasn't?

We hunger for acceptance, forgiveness, love, and kindness. It's become permissible to starve the people we encounter, in reality, from our attention because it has also become normal to live behind screens: iPhones, Androids, and their competitors gave birth to a real-life Zombie Apocalypse. The security that inner bliss creates can only be accomplished with acceptance that the ONLY thing you can fully control is yourself and YOUR reactions to what happens around you - in real life and online, whether you're being watched or not. Loneliness and depression are epidemic and I'm not surprised if it intensifies incrementally according to how much time is spent on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

Every new day we can choose to rise from the darkness of the previous night and create light. Living is the greatest opportunity to waste! It's a choice to respond with compassion instead of anger, acceptance rather than judgment, and love over hate. Silent observance (not commenting with sarcasm and insults) is usually the kindest and most appropriate response to things we disagree with in person AND even more so on social media. It's sad to see how many enemy-ships have resulted from refusal to reconcile with differences in opinion while embracing the newly acceptable practices of "unfriending" and "blocking" people from our lives. The ultimate displays of primitive intollerance are now inaugurated via the most developed modern technology.

The baseless hatred and anger is rampant online and I ask, why not kill it with kindness? To err is human and to err on the side of kindness and being nice can never harm you. As one example of a variety of takes on a human truth states: they may forget what you said - but they will always remember how you made them feel.

I'm not perfect and that drives me to try harder. Every act and intention should be for goodness, for light, for kindness, for happiness, and for love. The rest is a waste of precious time. Life is too short to let it blow away. There are no refunds or exchanges. Time is irreplaceable and social media may be robbing us of of our most precious possession: life.