“Each of us has the
opportunity to change and grow until our very last breath. Happy creating.”
-
M.F. Ryan
Evolution seems to be the one force in this world that we cannot
stop. All of this rapid change among
us has caused a shift in how we view the world, and each other. All of the slow parts of life such as that
period of time in trying to get to know someone before going out with them, or
gathering all of the facts on a particular issue before making a decision have been
eliminated with the emergence of technology and convenience. All of a sudden, living has become that much
easier…or has it? Could you not make the
argument that convenience and unlimited accessibility to people’s lives has
made us more of a reactive society? It
seems like people live for the quick win these days; things like how many likes
we get on Facebook or Instagram greatly outweigh things that really matter like
actual time spent time with someone. No
one can be mad this premise though; it’s just the way the world is – we’ll all
be fine. I’m not even here to touch on
the direct effects of social media; rather, I’m more interested in the indirect
effects it has.
Let’s be cerebral here.
Chances are, when someone tells you that they are not friends with a
person anymore, they are referring to them as being deleted on Facebook. Realistically, is that easy to do away with
someone? I don’t want to say that people’s
feelings have been numbed from a valuable life component such as friendship, I
just think those feelings have been reallocated. Instead of using those efforts to mend broken
relationships, we use those feelings to write someone off completely. It’s funny, because when we make mistakes,
they are never viewed in a harsh light. As
a matter of fact, we’ll actually create elaborate explanations as to how it
wasn’t a big deal, or why need to be forgiven.
In that moment, we are conciliatory for our indiscretions. It is a genuine emotion that seems to have no
bearing anymore. The tails side to all
of this is our unwillingness to forgive.
Instead of keeping our tough decisions and hard-pressed issues close to
the vest, we go public with it and show our hand to the world leaving them to
be our jury. It’s ironic because we’ll
write a post like “So many things have gone wrong today. I just want it to end.” and people will show their support by liking it! Honestly, how much sense does that make? None if you ask me. These same people that air their dirty
laundry via social networking wonder why they constantly spoken about and are
crushed by people they claim to know. What
they don’t understand is if these negative people are shooting the guns, you
gave them the bullets.
To combat all of this negativity, people seek strength in
numbers – they look for people who share the same viewpoint as them in an
attempt to absolve themselves from the shame of being a catalyst in the
matter. So what did we lose in all of
this? I would say our ability to be
rational, our ability to forgive, and in some cases, our integrity. We live this life to appease the cool factor;
we want the attention, we want the likes, and we most definitely want to be
interesting – albeit negative or positive.
What did we gain? Honestly, I don’t
have that answer. I have never saw the
value in acting before thinking and I understand that spoken words are sped
arrows that we can’t retract. I’m far
from perfect, and I’ll be the first to admit that, but I can’t let that break
me down and force me to inaction. We’re
all curious and caring people that have a lot to offer – I’m certain of that. What we need to understand is that everyone
we encounter has the opportunity to hurt us (and most people will). The resolution is not to write these people off
or to want their blood; the trick is to pick the ones worth fighting for and to
forgive them. We’re not supposed to
think about how to live; it’s just supposed to hit us. People, we are making this way too
difficult. Let’s just get back to
basics.
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