Back in February, I wrote about how I came to this idea of Living Forgiveness. If you read further here and don’t quite understand where I am coming from, you might want to follow the link and read the back story to the idea.
Last night I found myself getting a little rough around the edges with people on Facebook. I admit that I might be checking Facebook a little too much these days, but I am trying to run a business, I’m part of quite a few groups plus I run the Pencils&Lipstick group, but still, I check it too much. And quite frankly I’m so tired of the virtue signaling.
A friend of mine ranted about people needing to stay home, stating, “When I’m out getting my son his medicine or running to the store I get so mad about how many cars are driving about and how many cars are in the parking lots of some places…”
The first thing I thought was: “They probably thought the same about you driving around because the truth is that you don’t know why those people are driving. And as long as they’re in their cars, why do you care? There’s no place fun for them to go, so stop!”
Then I thought: “More businesses than you know are considered essential businesses and I’m grateful that those workers are willing to go in and work. Also, did you notice how many places are closed?” (Cue worry for the economy and small businesses in my spirit…)
But before typing anything I would regret, I took a deep breath and scrolled on. Then, horrors of horrors, I came across a post about the politicians. AND I made the mistake of reading people’s responses. (what is wrong with me?) Even though it makes me literally mad when people just give opinions with the wrong information already because they chose to listen to a partisan show instead of going straight to the source, I still kept reading. And within seconds I felt my heart rate rise and a few unkind adjectives start to swirl around my head.
Pause
This quarantine is pushing the limits of my ability to forgive in realtime. All the stupid things people say about each other and to each other. All the ways that politicians are wagging their fingers. The ridiculous spin the media is putting out and don’t even get me started on Twitter. It’s gotten worse than it ever was. I just had to go back on a Twitter fast because I can’t stand reading the comments from people who must choose to be ignorant. And look, there I go again with my poor choice of adjectives.
This is a time of high stress and strong opinions. I have my own opinions that you may or may not agree with. You have your opinions that I may actually want to laugh at or nod my head along with. Who knows? Your trust might be in something I distrust. Your fear might be disproportionate to mine or vice versa.
The truth is that when trying to live in forgiveness in real time, none of that matters. I have to forgive the politicians and realign my mind to CHOOSE to believe the best of them. (And then hand it over to God because that is darn near impossible for me). I have to choose to forgive (which basically means to not take offense with) my friends instead of harping on them. When I choose to forgive them my perspective changes (forgiveness them in this instance could be put in this way: “I forgive you for polluting my Facebook feed with posts that stress me out or don’t entertain me. Insert laughing emoji here. But as silly as that sounds, that simple and silly act helps turn your thinking around.) Everyone is stressed out. Everyone is worried. And not everyone is taking my excellent advice to journal instead of ranting on Facebook (tongue in cheek. No one has to listen to me, of course).
Impossible Times?
These are crazy times that we once would have thought impossible to come to pass. Yet, here we are. But just because they are impossible to understand and easy to get crazy over, they are also a good moment to go hard in running after developing the personal growth you wished to develop anyway. Hard times create strong men, as the saying goes (men being a general term here. That’s the English language, GenZ. Get over it). We do our best growing when we go through a challenge, so I will continue to remind myself to love and forgive in real-time. And I encourage you to, in the very least, reflect on what it might mean for your mental health and emotional well-being to learn to Live Forgiveness.
(And one great way to do that is a nifty little button at the right-hand corner of each Facebook post where you can snooze that person for 30 days…..)