Be Careful What You Say

   Sometimes, you need to be careful what you say and to whom you say it. Sometimes, you also need to be careful what you do and who might view it. 

 

   Someone I know has a little blurby at the bottom of all the e-mails she sends out which goes something like this: "Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."
   I believe this is true; as much as we might be caught up in our own little turmoil, we need to remember that every other person we run into is in the midst of a turmoil of their own. How they are dealing with that turmoil may not be the same as how we are. We also need to remember that their ability to handle that turmoil might be on thin ice. It could be that they have completely lost that ability. Just at the moment that they may have totally lost the ability to handle the stressors of daily living, your path may cross theirs and what you say and what you do may have much more impact on the situation than you ever could possibly have imagined.

   You might save their life with a simple, random word or two. You might somehow or other ensure that their life ends, possibly right in front of you. It is not beyond the realm of reason that something you say or do might cause your life to end. I don't think there is a moment too innocent for this to happen.
   In light of all this, I pretty well constantly attempt to assess situations as they occur.
   I sometimes run afoul of other drivers out there. There is occasionally the temptation to lay on the horn or make some less than complimentary hand gesture and then I stop myself. I stop myself because in the grand scheme of things I don't know what effect this might have on that other person. Maybe there was a reason for why they were driving like that. Maybe it was just a brief moment of inattention, something we are all guilty of from time to time. Perhaps that person is speeding to the hospital because a loved one's been hurt. You just never know what a person's story might be.
   In this age of social media, you have the opportunity to interact in a variety of ways with hundreds of people all at once. Depending on the nature of that interaction, it might then be shared with hundreds of thousands of people.
  

This past Halloween, a young girl in Michigan made the mistake of dressing up for the occasion (as many people did) and then posting pics of herself on Facebook and Twitter (as many people did). Her mistake, though, was dressing up as a Boston Marathon bombing victim.
   She was immediately deluged with hate mail--some directed at her and much of it swirling around her. She had also previously made the mistake of posting nude pictures and her driver's licence on another social media outlet. This gave a whole bunch of extremely angry people access to some of her personal information. Soon, she and her family were receiving death threats. All of this because of a (terribly) misguided costume choice and then the ill-fated decision to make it so public.
   I occasionally find myself wrestling with what to put out there on social media. Most of it revolves around my quirky sense of humour and trying not to offend anybody with some of the stuff which comes out of my mouth. You have no idea how many times I've re-written a blog post or agonized over a Facebook comment so that no feelings would be hurt. This is all because you just never know how something you say might be interpreted or how an action might be seen.
   There is a world out there that is listening. More people than you might think are paying attention to what you say and do. As much as it might be enjoyable to say whatever comes to your mind whenever it gets there, it's essential to remember that this is not a consequence-less exercise. For the most part, we are all guilty of wanting to say or do things that will only get a positive response. Unfortunately, this is not the way the world works.
   This is not to say don't be outspoken or brave. Just be prepared for (but not scared of) what your bravery brings you in return.