Barnmaven

So sensitive

I think of the bloggers I follow as friends.  Some of them know that, and perhaps feel the same way about me.  Some don't.  I feel they are friends because I have shared in their lives through the medium of their words and in them I have recognized myself. 

But sometimes I don't understand their sensitivity to the slightest insult. 

Perhaps my experience as a blogger doesn't lend to understanding.  It helps to have a small audience.

It helps to not be (s0) sensitive (anymore, after years of therapy and, one must say, getting old).

It helps that in almost five years of blogging I have probably only had one truly negative comment on this blog and one or two on posts elsewhere.

Even so.  I've had negative comments in other places that mattered way more than this space.  At work.  From friends or in organizations I belong to.  I'm no stranger to hearing really remarkable things being said about me - some true, some not.  Some nice, some ugly.  Whatever.

I don't care if you want to criticize me.  It's fine.  Go ahead.  I can take it.  If I weren't prepared to be disagreed with I wouldn't be putting my words on the internet for the world to view.  Offering opinion invites scrutiny.  Invites differing opinions.  Invites others to be amused, outraged, insulted, offended, enraged. (With any luck, not so much of the enraged. One hopes.)

Rarely am I critical of other bloggers, at least publicly.  I tend to be a supportive person, and I think that life's challenges for other people are for them to work out.  I think most people know what they really need to do to solve their problems, and the best way I know to help them is to just let them know I care.  I might have my own opinions about why they're in the pickle they're in, but personally I don't know that its helpful to share those opinions.  Besides, unless I know the person intimately, there are details of their particular situation that are invisible and unknowable to me.  That's the point where sharing an uninformed opinion might just make me an asshole. 

But just because someone's being an asshole doesn't make them a troll.

Very rarely will I leave a negative comment on another's personal blog, with the notable exception of Penelope Trunk, who absolutely makes me want to weep in frustration.  Other than that, mostly I believe I'm benign.  But I believe very firmly in the value of the critic. 

Insulting for the sake of insult is childish.  Taking umbrage or offering a different opinion is something different.  Perhaps others don't dialogue the way one would like them to, always, but the opinion that is offered is nonetheless often quite legitimate. 

 My sincerest advice to any blogger ( or friend on facebook or person on Twitter or coworker or RL person I love) is to let the voices of the angry horde blow by you like so much dust in the wind.  Listen to your own heart.  Do what you think is right.  It might not be right for me, it might be a bad choice that you make, but you have the right to make it and you have the right to ignore all advice to the contrary.  This is, though, only a first step.  Learning to put your life out there for the world to comment on means starting at step one:  Let it go. 

You could stay there forever at step one, learning to let what others think mean just what it does.  Staying at the first step is an option, certainly.  There's another place to grow, though, if you're up to it.  If you are secure enough to handle a little criticism, hear what is offered.  Receive it from a different place than one of defensiveness.  Listen to criticism with ears that are not  emotionally engaged.  Sometimes the simple act of doing this will grant you the ability to garner insight out of what you might have one time dismissed.  You don't have to take everything to heart, you don't have to take anything to heart. But don't be afraid to sift through it.  Dismiss what doesn't resonate, accept what might be worth digging in to a little deeper.  Do it without apology, without anger, without judgment.  Without EGO.

I appreciate the sense of community that being online offers.  I have a deep and abiding sense of gratitude to so many bloggers who have made me laugh, made me cry, made me think, made me mad.  Every interaction I've had has helped me to know myself better, helped me to grow.

But I think many times some of us fail to make the distinction between those that are critical of us and those that only wish to make us be quiet or be hurtful.  I think it is too easy to lump all negative commentary into one big cooking pot and label it "troll soup."

Yes, there are those that simply leave nasty words because for whatever reason at the time they wrote them, they felt joy in being destructive.  So what?  Unless they're threatening you bodily harm, their words mean nothing.  Hell, when I wrote the piece a couple of years ago about my daughter punching a boy  in the junk, the secondary syndication of that post on a nationally read platform actually had one commenter suggesting readers look me up via my BlogHer profile and pay me a visit.  (You bet, pal, I welcome you into my yard, so long as you're fine with really big dogs and if you don't mind the police officer who lives across the street may wish to handcuff you if you get out of hand.)  That kind of crap is out of line.  But whatever.  Someone calling me a jerk or a bitch or saying I'm a terrible parent or a terrible human being?  Those are just words.  Those words don't carry any more power than I lend them.  The ability to cope with the virulence of others, the responsibility to cope with the opinions of others , lies not with others.  It belongs to me.

Those who put their words in the court of public opinion have known this truth for as long as the written word has existed.  People will never as a whole respond to my words in the manner I hope they will.  I can deal with that.

I don't have to be angry with people because their opinions of me or my writing aren't what I hoped they would be.  Neither do you. 

Relatively speaking

About once every two weeks I browse through the "people you may know" feature on LinkedIn.  If you're a social media junkie, you know that LinkedIn is the business and career (i.e. clean and sanitized) version of Facebook.  People post their resumes and job experience, connect with colleagues and business contacts.  No friday-night drunken party pictures or gratuitous photos of children and pets, just all work, all the time.  Well, mostly, anyway.  Every once in a while I link my blog in a very discreet place on my LinkedIn page, followed shortly by a wave of fear that causes me to un-link saidsame blog.  I have nothing to hide.  I have everything to hide.  I'm not sure if I ever decide to go job-seeking that a prospective employer would be truly impressed by reading about my bleeding hoo-haw or my dogs or my very special and very challenging children.  (One of these days I'll post more about how I'm going to make a bajillion dollars when I create MyFaceLinkTwit+ and everyone migrates their social media addition to it.)

One time, before they added the feature where you can scroll through profiles of people who are connected to people who are connected to you they used to just make a few suggestions by name.  Once LinkedIn suggested that I connect to my Mother's cousin's daughter's husband, who I have not seen since 1996 and who lives in South Carolina.  How did you know, LinkedIn, HOW DID YOU KNOW???? 

So last week I'm scrolling through the list of people LinkedIn thinks I want to connect with, and I see a name that I recognize. Its the daughter of the alcoholic I lived with some twenty or more years ago, the daughter of the man who glued me to the path of the codependent, the daughter whose father owes the state of New Jersey some $54,000 in back child support.  Wow, LinkedIn, REALLY?  How did you know?

As it turns out, the suggestion wasn't that mysterious, she is the connection of a connection.  And then I look at my list of connections and I start to have that strange sensation of sinking into a swimming pool filled with marshmallows.  Goosebumps rise on my forearms as I consider the breadth of people represented in those several hundred names on my contacts list.  High school friends.  College friends, sorority sisters.  Ex lovers.  Coworkers current and past.  Business associates, fellow Bastards, fellow bloggers. 

All across the web, we are connected.  We are connected on Facebook, we follow each other on Twitter, we know someone who knows someone who knows someone who...fill in the blank. 

Connected.

Interrelated.

I think now, more than ever, the average non-adopted person can understand what its like to be an adoptee "in reunion" and living with relatives from two (or sometimes even more) families.  Adoption, divorce, remarriage, step-familying - my children have a brother from another mother, I will likely soon be acquiring another step-offspring, I have a brother and cousins by adoption and brothers and sisters and cousins by birth, because their father and I are both adopted, my children have at least eight sets of grandparents, and that's not counting potential future stepgrandparents.  But when viewed in the context of the world of social networking so many of us inhabit, it no longer seems strange, does it?

We may not be one people, but we are all on one planet.  Social Media has provided the material framework to prove what I've known all along - we are connected, each and every one of us, if not by blood and birth then by common acquaintance and if not by that then by common interest or common point of contention. 

And yet, more so than I can remember in my very brief lifetime, the dividing lines between people in my country are wider and more stark.  We live in a world where we can connect to one another at will, with an ease and speed never before known in the history of humankind, and the beliefs and the politics that we cling to drive us even farther apart.   The juxtaposition of these two concepts, our connectedness and our difference, flattens me with the irony it engenders.

Together.  One.

Apart.  Many.

Friends.

Enemies.

To quote Burns, I dinna ken how that may be.