Tag Archives: human nature

sometimes people should just stop picking at other people. this is one of those times.

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I swear there is a meme for everything and this one is pretty much perfect. Why am I posting this? Because some people just floor me on social media. Facebook especially.

Backstory: a few years ago when I had my first knee surgery, I was literally just home from the hospital and practically still drooling from the anesthesia. Sitting in a daze in bed, I was mindlessly looking through social media on my tablet. I noticed this one woman posting comments on my Facebook timeline that I just didn’t want to deal with. So I didn’t say anything, I just deleted the comments. After all, your personal Facebook page is like your virtual house, right?

So the woman whose comment I had removed posted another comment in the same vein. There I was practically drooling like you can do after surgery and anesthesia and I wondered what alternate reality I was living in that this woman wouldn’t just get I probably didn’t want to deal with this? I made a decision. I deleted the new comment and quietly unfriended the woman and went to sleep.

Unfriending this person was not something I wanted to do. But when I was still sitting in bed the next day scrolling through Facebook still somewhat dazed post surgery, I knew it was the right decision. Why? Because she took the argument of the deleted comments and moved them essentially to another woman’s Facebook page (whom I also knew – ironically I introduced them to one and other) and sat there talking about me like I couldn’t see it. Kind of like they were talking on the phone only it was all playing out on Facebook. It was crazy and I decided, sanity and maturity should prevail, and I just blocked both of them so I wouldn’t have to see their online brand of crazy in the future.

Still part of me felt bad. I had known the one woman for many years. But knowing her was sometimes exhausting. The other woman was always just kind of sad always striving to belong. Also exhausting. I sent both women a note explaining why I had decided to distance. I figured I’d make one last attempt at salvaging the relationships. I explained to them I just had surgery and I didn’t want to deal with any of this right now. But if they wanted to talk about it, explain what they didn’t understand, and I would try to listen. Need list to say, that didn’t happen never heard from either, and I went on about my life. I wish I could say I missed either woman, but I don’t.

I especially don’t miss people who act like this while experiencing a global pandemic. Life is kind of stressful enough right now. What I didn’t expect was that they would do this again to someone else. I sadly thought this behavior was because of me. But it’s just them.

A very nice woman who is a very close friend has literally just had a similar experience with these two over the past couple of days. My friend had posted on HER Facebook timeline that it really bothered her that people including the President keep referring to COVID19 as the “Chinese Virus.” She said she found it offensive. In my opinion she’s not wrong.

No matter what your opinion is, my friend said it on her timeline. It’s kind of like when a lot of us don’t judge the women in menopause posting the Nametest things all of the time that says they wish they were pregnant again or what movie star they think they look like. Their thing, not ours.

To be clear, viruses do not know borders and even the CDC Director Robert Redfield agrees with this point. To keep saying that over and over puts Chinese Americans and other Asians in Jeopardy much like what happened with the Italians and Japanese during World War II and the internment camps in this country. Or the Irish need not apply campaigns and signs you would see in shop windows in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s kind of like referring to the influenza pandemic of the early 20th century as the “Spanish flu”. The virus didn’t actually originate in Spain that might’ve been one of the first places that documented it in newspapers. The COVID19 virus exploded in China, but there is no absolute that it is the true country of origin for the virus.

Well the woman I removed from my timeline a few years ago, of course had to argue with my friend. My friend politely asked her to kind of stop, and sadly that didn’t happen. So my friend just quietly unfriended her and blocked her and removed the comments. Below is the comment that finally made my friend have enough.

Now you would think that would have been the end of it. But sadly no, the other woman I had removed from my circle of friends a few years ago for chiming in where it wasn’t her concern did so again. Seriously:

So my friend unfriended and blocked the other one too. I truly am stunned at how pig ignorant people can be. It’s like these women have this whole tag team of nastiness, which is truly sad.  I wonder if either one of them gets it yet that more and more people distance themselves from these two all of the time. They are having social distancing practiced on them as a matter of keeping one’s sanity.

My friend wasn’t “slamming” the President. She was specifically referring to a term in this whole coronavirus world we live in that she found offensive.

Given the times we currently live in and everything that everyone is going through, wouldn’t you think that these two women would have better things to do than to argue and spread vitriol? What do they gain with these little Facebook games?

I am really sorry that this happened to my friend too. I remember how upsetting I found it briefly at the time. It’s like this whole sense of betrayal when people are so nasty. Then you realize no one is worth that crap.

Look, OK, we probably all have a more than small dose of cabin fever at this point. We are living our lives in a way we’ve never had to live them before. But when I look at what those who live through World War II have to say it just sort of gives you a whole new perspective.

 I can’t make people be kinder to one another. And I’m sure some will have comments about what I have written today. It’s just one of the many things I am thinking about because face it, we all have so much time to think right now. And perhaps that is part of the problem. I don’t think some people are comfortable with their thoughts.

But I don’t understand with all that we have to deal with why these two women persist in doing this? All they are doing is isolating themselves further from people within their community and showing the world how unhappy they are. And that’s the thing that we are also discovering through all of this staying at home and self isolation: we are not islands unto ourselves after all. Humans need human contact and community, and it takes a global pandemic to realize it. So try being nicer, right?

I have always maintained that social media is both a blessing and a curse. It would be nice if right now with our every day lives up-ended indefinitely if we could try to make it more of a blessing than a curse.

If something annoys you or you don’t agree with it, you don’t have to leave a comment every time. Sometimes you can just scroll past it. That way people don’t fight and friendships remain intact during a very difficult time.

Try to be kind today.



mulching

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Today I got out into the garden for a few hours to spread wood chips. I have a giant mulch mountain and the remnants of a smaller mulch mountain courtesy of the February 5th ice storm and subsequent tree work. I find it easier to start this while the plants are all dormant because it’s easier to spread things out.

Not everything is dormant, though. I see the little green beginnings of water probably bulbs starting to emerge here and there. And the birds are starting to sing other than winter songs.

I moved a lot more woodchips than I intended. Maybe it was the stubborn gardener in me who doesn’t like being called a city girl once in a while. Or maybe it was just because people have looked at the piles of wood chips and said that I needed a bobcat to move them.

(Uhhh no I don’t.)

I did not accomplish all that I wanted to, but I made a very respectable start at it. As the snow melts in my backyard and in my words I spread my chips. In other words, as the snow creeps back, my wood chips creep forward.

The sheer physicality of doing gardening again after so long was great. I know I will pay for it later in my lower back, but right now I’m feeling very Wonder Woman-esque!

It also felt good to begin to right what mother nature turned upside down but a short month ago.

I need to get some of this done now, and will do more as the weather warms towards spring.

When I garden is when I do a lot of my thinking. I don’t know if it is the connection to earth, or just the time to myself doing whatever it is I’m doing and letting my mind wander.

I was thinking about people and what drives them and what moves them today.

This morning I had someone wig out on me slightly for tidying up a bit of years old publicity that was for all intents and purposes my intellectual-property because I created it. It is also something that is over and done with. The person I did it for originally, contacted me and was not happy. I had decided to take down a webpage that had NOT been in active for a few years and had received very little traffic in the first place.

The truth of it is, my actions had nothing to do with them. It was me, tidying up. I am going to assume they were having a bad day and/or a hard week. This is someone I’m going to hold a grudge with. File under: stuff happens. I am just letting it go.

Then I heard from a friend of mine. Someone had forwarded her an email where she was discussed by another person. No doubt about it, it was hurtful.

My friend has a tender heart and a good spirit, but this really upset her I could tell. I told her to let it go. Yet she struggles with it and I totally get why.

But the thing is this: if we can’t let some things go we will drive ourselves crazy. Not everyone is going to like us or be happy with us every hour and every minute of every day. To an extent, that is on them. It is their issue, and I think we should leave those things as their issues.

I have had to practice what I preach in my own life. And it’s not easy. Sometimes it is very hard to bite your tongue. Especially when you would like to roll up in front of those people who irk you at times and yell “Oh shut up, flannel lips!”

But in the end what will that accomplish? The answer of course is not much. So it’s easier to learn to let it go.

I don’t say that lightly, as I can be a brooder. But if someone wishes to wish me ill, I can’t stop them. And I’m not going to own it like I deserve it, it’s their issue. Not mine.

Sometimes I think just as human beings have the capacity for great love and great kindness, they also have a huge capacity for hurt. And sometimes they don’t do it on purpose. Sometimes they do.

However, how their negativity is released to the universe depends a little on each of us as individuals. We can either soak it up like a sponge and become infected by their negativity, or we can be a little more practical about it and just let it roll off our backs .

And it’s hard to let stuff roll off your back. But sometimes you just have to do it whether you want to or not.

And I have to be honest, when I am trying to work through things, gardening is one of the best things for me. I have time to myself, I have time to be one with the earth, it gives me a creative outlet, and I can work off steam if I need to. I will note however, that most of the time I just garden because I like to do it!

At the end of the day, I think people should garden more. We can only control our own actions, we can’t control the actions of others.

(Hmmm I think my garden Buddha is rubbing off on me.)

TGIF all.