Voluntary Poison – At Sea – [04/17/2019]

Before I begin, a few facts that are already fairly well known: I am a relatively private person. I – for the most part – keep myself to myself. If offered the choice I much prefer a face to face conversation than an online discussion, and I would rather have a single heart-felt face to face debate than a million online firefights. Despite having to rely on it for communicative purposes I neither like nor particularly trust the internet.

I know, I’m one of those strange people.

While these pages are kept ‘private’ in the sense that I plead with people not to give out the link to strangers (for the reasons why, you can take a look at the disclaimer section), the information to reach it is available to any who ask for the most part.

That does not mean that it is not a perfectly valid means of self-expression. It does not mean that it does not have the potential to make a difference, even if it’s a tiny one. I try – again for the most part – to stay away from social media. I do not get political, I do not normally post opinions, I try to only share light-hearted and positive thoughts, because I think the world has enough negativity. I leave the deep thoughts to here, where I can express them and work through them a bit more fully. I go out of my way not to get into those subjects online, because text has little tone, feelings get hurt, opinions get trodden on and nothing really – in the end- gets solved.

Now, setting all of that aside for a moment:

Do not, not for one moment, think that just by looking at what I post online, or what I do or do not post on social media – that that means you know me.

Because you probably don’t.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a few people that I have never met in person that know me sometimes better than I know myself; but that is a small handful, and those relationships are hard-won and hard-cultivated.

If you really want to know what I care about, what I am outraged about, what I worry about and fear until it eats me up inside, pull up a chair (virtual or otherwise), have a conversation, and I will gladly tell you. Just because I do not post about something on social media does not remotely mean I am unaware of it, or that I don’t care about it, it means that I don’t care for Facebook to have all my opinions in it’s server storage, and that I don’t care to bring more negativity to an already negative world. Also, in this day and age, it seems that sadly one cannot even express a positive opinion or angle on something without sparking outrage, everything gets terribly twisted no matter what the original intent. That’s not a social sphere I take great joy in being a part of. It’s one I’m actively trying to step away from.

We have somehow evolved into a society where if you happen to state that you care about “thing A” it somehow automatically means that you don’t care about “Thing B”…we have somehow conditioned ourselves into this voluntarily poisonous environment, where we only judge ourselves and others by what we don’t do, what we don’t achieve, where even trying to shine a tiny light somehow gets twisted into more dark. Our growing dependency on that toxic environment honestly frightens me more than a little.

So no, just because I do not often choose to rant and rave does not mean I don’t care. Just because I don’t feel the need to make my words go viral doesn’t mean that I don’t want to make a difference. There are other ways to make a difference. Please don’t assume that you know what I do off-page, don’t assume you know the whole story. Because you don’t. No one does. Maybe that’s the whole point.

Maybe we need to remember that?