Rethinking Perception
I woke up this morning, checked my Twitter feed as usual, and saw my friend had a tweet which got 239 likes, 50 retweets, and 30 comments. That’s a lot to me.
Here’s the tweet:
Seems harmless, right? Actually a nice reminder.
Anyway, Washington Post Political Reporter Dave Weigel retweeted this and it unleashed the floodgates. Some people were nice, others responded with things like, “Vote Democrat and we’ll call you whatever you want” or “As long as you don’t put that monster into office, we’ll call you whatever you want” or “You’ll earn that extra I when keep pedophiles out of the senate… sincerely all of not Alabama” or “hey thanks,,, most of us out here with an education knew that. Now can y’all elect the non-molester please?”
If you take a quick look at my friend’s profile (I won’t name him since he’d prefer it that way), you’d realize that this dude is a wealth of information ranging all cultures. The tweet at the top of his feed this morning was letting people know of a free concert at the Hindu Temple in Pelham on Saturday evening.
I realize that this is the internet and outspoken people are likely the ones who are angry and respond and the people who are nice don’t speak out because there’s nothing notable for them to say that comes to mind.
I also realize that positivity takes work. Sure, it’s hard to comment on every little thing, but think about how much of a difference it would make if we took a second to spin things positively and also let someone know that we appreciated their helpfulness?
For example, in response to the tweet, instead of saying something rude which is a generalization of all Alabamians, a proper way to respond might be, “Thank you for this. Will remember that going forward!”
It is tiring, I know, and you have to worry about yourself, but the things you do read and the things that impact you… we should thank those authors/people if we learned even one thing. Whether they see our note or not is a different thing entirely, but I’m sure that most people read their mentions/emails unless if they’re super famous.
I say all of this just to point out that we look down on things for no reason. For example, you can tell a lot about a person based on how they treat children. If someone looks at a child and thinks, “Oh, they’re just a child, they don’t know anything,” they probably feel that way about a lot of adults too. If someone treats a child with respect and believes that children can be smarter than us if we just give them the tools, they probably treat adults the same way too.
I’m completely guilty of this. I’m an arrogant, hardheaded asshole. Every day at work I am put in my place by people who are smarter than me and I am reminded that I have a lot of catching up to do. But as soon as I walk out of the office, I start bitching about some small issue that will pass in moments (think cursing at a bad driver).
What really ruffled my feathers is that the tone in these responses is unnecessary. It’s basically saying, “I won’t take you seriously as a person unless if you vote the way I want you to. Oh, and even if that happens, you’re still from Alabama.”
Then let me turn that on you. What are you doing to solve the problem? And how do you think that makes me feel? People already look down on my state. We’re near dead last in almost everything except best places to eat lists. We’re already self-conscious about how outsiders look at us. At some point, we stopped giving a shit because they’re not going to change.
As a result, you can see the logic train that leads to where we are today. Instead of offering solutions to create a better society and lift us up, we just kept getting mocked. And then we ended up in a place where Roy Moore is leading polls to be our senator (I’m also pretty sure Roy Moore was made fun of growing up and thought being a lawyer would make him cool, but that’s a hunch for another time).
In order to change my perceptions, I need to start with myself. I need to start by being a positive person in my actions and words. Instead of trusting my initial instincts and spitting out the first thing that comes to mind, I need to start with thinking about what exactly it is that I can do to help/act in some way that is reasonable/within my realm of possibility. If I have no positive action/words in mind which would help move something forward, then what is the point of speaking?
When we think and ponder on a daily basis, we are thinking of issues we face. We are thinking of what nuisances bother us. We are thinking of obstacles in our way. If we choose to do nothing, our thoughts would be the same. If we choose to act, our thoughts become different. We grow as people and as a society.
So what’s one small thing you can do to change how you perceive the world around you?