A Bit to Read

It’s sunny and warm and there is no sign of those thunderstorms they said we would have. Just gone from the forecast like they never were.

Today I’m going to say something I need to say, consider this a heads up. In the coming months, I may write something that strikes a nerve, even when I’m not talking to or about you.

Please feel free to examine why that is and how that is. But what is happening right now is FAR too dangerous to couch our words for fear of hurting feelings.

I am a porcupine absolutely packed with quills, and my only objective this year is to dig my feet in and hold on to that fraying rope that’s only just keeping us from tumbling over the edge of the abyss.

So I do not write things with the intention of hurting feelings.

But I also will not censor myself on the off chance someone might feel slighted, when that person is not the topic in the first place. Because then suddenly we’re not talking about the issue, but how people feel about how you are talking about the issue.

There’s no time or room for that.

Sometimes people mistake my commitment to justice and equality for a kind of softness, a niceness, a perspective borne of empathy and feeling for others. And I do have empathy.

But I am not a “nice” person.

That’s not the source of my words. That’s not the source of my fight. My fight comes not because I am soft-hearted, but because my heart is unmovable, as rigid as a diamond. My fight comes from my moral beliefs and what is right and wrong, what is good, what is bad, what is true and what is not true.

And make no mistake, all of that is on the line. Democracy itself is on the line, republicans have said as much. This isn’t a season of American Idol, this is the final battle, it seems, for the soul of our nation.

So if I say something that you take personally, first, please ask yourself, did I say it to you directly? Was I talking about you?

If the answer is yes to one or both of those, and sometimes it is, then you probably should take it personally, and perhaps clarify whether my intention was to upset.

But if something is not said to you and not said about you, and this is a broader lesson in social media, you have some options. You can scroll on. You can say something, if you want, I’m not the boss of you, but unless what I said was problematic in a way I hadn’t considered, you may not get the response you want.

Or you can take the opportunity to think about why you took something personally that was not personal.

Anyway, that’s enough of a rant for today, have a great Tuesday.