Am I Wrong?
So I’m writing my first creative non-fiction story in conjunction with this blog and it has brought forth the world of feelings from my past. It centres around my early 20s and the highs and lows I experienced growing up. A time that seems light years away, but thanks to social media is something I can look back on daily. I have this weird disconnected connectedness to the whole thing.
The ongoing pandemic has added a new layer to my understanding of myself, and more importantly how I connect to it on a larger scale, my big picture. What will I leave behind? I know I have a digital identity that dates back to the late 2000s, but will a bunch of out of context posts be what I have to show for who I was publicly? I am so much more than 140 characters.
Life is too short, immensely short, inexplicably short. It is a blink in time. Days may run long, but you never know what you have until it’s gone. From what I’ve learnt about loss is this, there are never enough hours in the day to tell the people you care about, how much you care about them. So don’t focus on that. Focus on what you can control, which is savouring and respecting the time you have, not holding regrets, and wishing people well even if they won’t wish you well back. It’s not about their response. It’s about you letting people know that you don’t hold hard feelings over the past. The past is the past, it’s done. What exactly is the point holding feelings of resentment for people who no longer exist in your life?
Everyone I’ve written about, no matter how I speak of them in my story, I want to wish them well. While our time may have passed it doesn’t mean I have to take it with me into my present day. They were there to teach me lessons and let me grow, sometimes you outgrow people but that does not show weakness or limits to those people, it just demonstrates how time changes things.
During this pandemic I have messaged people I haven’t spoken to in years, and I’ll be honest I’m probably not done. Don’t be mistaken. I do not reach out to those from my past in an earnest attempt to rekindle what once was. I reach out to those from my past to know that regardless of what they are going through in the present, I want them to know that there are people in the world who still respect them and hope for their well-being. I don’t expect a reply. They don’t owe me that, no one owes anyone that, but surely people don’t send out thank you cards expecting a reply.
I think it’s easy to spread negativity. #Savage #clapbacks are a common currency for us online. We live in a world where convenience is a tap away and the news cycle switches on a dime. Internet shaming is normal practice. Seeing men and woman fight on reality television is entertainment for us. We consume negativity, it is readily available.
Being nice to people is hard. What if they aren’t nice to you back? What if your kindness is interpreted in the wrong way or taken advantage of? There are a million reasons to not do something, I get it, but the one thing I have found the most rewarding about just being nice to people is that they usually will have less of a reason to be upset with you if you hand out the first olive branch. If you fight fire with fire you get more fire. But if someone has brought some water things tend to end a little differently.
To hit some standard beats “we’re living in unprecedented times”. Yes, yes we are. Shouldn’t we then work on figuring out unprecedented new ways of dealing with situations? I’m tired of people just labeling this time as unprecedented without offering up unprecedented ways of us dealing with it. Perhaps then the easiest way to start is just by being nice to people you wouldn’t normally be nice to. For me that has come in the form of people from my past as well as the strangers I have interacted with during this quarantine. I’ve had some rewarding conversations from those encounters and I don’t regret a single thing from trying. It’s become an easier muscle for me to use as I stretch it every day.
What better time to be kind than now? What do you have to lose?
Image by Mali Aroesti from Pixabay
