Good Writing Requires Conflict — Good Living Does Not

The Change Begins With You

We all know that every good story has a palpable conflict. It’s what keeps you hooked and makes you want to keep reading to the bitter end… or the peaceful resolution.

Real life though, is better lived without the conflict and drama. Frankly, I have seen enough conflict and drama in the last few years to do me the rest of my life and then some.

I often think that life was better lived back in the days before technology made communication so simple. With communication comes miscommunication and that often ends in tension, conflict, and drama. The world was a better place when people had no other choice but to mind their own business.

Drama might make for good entertainment, but when it seeps into our reality it sucks the joy from life. Remember joy, happiness, and laughter? It’s getting harder to find unless you can tune out the world for a while.

I once thought social media was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Living in a relatively remote area, it allowed me to easily stay in touch with friends, loved ones, and customers.

It didn’t take long though for the drama to start popping up in social media threads. People were using it as a platform to jump up on their soapboxes and cry about injustice. Great debates were being had and keyboard warriors were popping up everywhere.

People who were normally shy and quiet were finding their voices. That’s all well and good, until people read a tone that isn’t there, or type before they think.

With the onset of the pandemic, social media quickly became our main means of staying in touch. As we sat isolated in our homes, we started spending more time on social media. We needed engagement just to keep us sane.

We longed for a return to normalcy. Lots of folks I know started striking out on social media. We started seeing terms likes ‘sheeple’, ‘anti-maskers’, and ‘anti-vaxxers’.

Friendships are dissolving and judgments are being formed over things that are really personal matters, with no bearing on whether a person is good or evil.

We are so busy bickering amongst ourselves that we seem to have lost sight of a few things. Like a bunch of school children, we’re hanging on to grudges and striking out, in an attempt to ensure that everybody is on ‘our side’.

We’ve forgotten that as adults we can agree to disagree and still be friends. Most horrendously, we’ve forgotten the Golden Rule, ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’.

We seem to no longer realize that if we see something on Social Media that we don’t like we can just keep scrolling. We don’t need to keep looking at it and we certainly don’t need to engage! It’s no more than words on a screen, you don’t have to let them hurt you.

Honest to God, you don’t need to drag that drama into your life!

What happens when you get sucked into these debates and quarrels on social media? I know a lot of people that think they look so very smart when they are spewing off their opinions online. Some folks even feel like they are Justice Warriors.

Does it really bring any lasting sense of satisfaction or accomplishment? Are they attracting positive feedback or just creating more dissonance and causing themselves unnecessary stress and tension? I see people every day that are mindlessly distancing themselves even more from friends and loved ones, all under the guise of standing up for what they believe in.

We’ve all become incredibly sensitive since this pandemic started. We need to keep in mind that everybody is struggling. Now more than ever we don’t see the whole picture that hides behind a person’s words. We don’t know the struggles people are facing.

We need to stop and really think before we speak or write. Mindfulness is just good for you. We should try to be mindful in ALL of our interactions. We need to consider that other people might also just be longing for a little bit of loving kindness.

We need to be gentle, not just with ourselves, but with everybody!

Remember, you get what you give. The energy and attitude that you are showing the world is exactly what is going to come back to you. If you’re longing for kindness and compassion, try putting some out there.

It might now happen overnight, but you’ll find that if don’t engage in those trivial, or not so trivial debates and instead just breathe and maintain your calm, your life will be better. Slowly but surely, one kind word at a time, we can change the world, at least our little piece of it.

Originally published at https://vocal.media.

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