How Words I Said Today Are A Lesson for What I Don't Want Said Tomorrow

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It was such a glorious day. The sky soared in its hopeful blue, the jet contrails streaking east to west, north to south, giving a depth effect. Commercial jets ferrying high above, letting anyone craning their neck from the ground know that humans were alive and well on land and sea. It was business as usual, life was good, a happy day was at hand.

This was all true for me, but so were my rock-hard calves. They’d taken the brunt of my rather smart idea the day before to test my Stairmaster training on actual stairs in a nearby building. I wanted to see how my not-as-smart idea to race up the Empire State Building’s stairwell was faring. It’s coming along, but oh, those calves. Note to self — keep training.

Then the music came drifting out of Spotify flowing from my phone. The music was the singer-songwriter stuff I like, more instrument and voice than banger sound, and it put me in a mood. I could see how perfect the world was, which I reveled in for a moment, but then — up surfaced how flawed I am by comparison.

I had a sense of the movie, Inside Out 2, come skittering across my mind. I’d just seen it — Pixar, you beautiful creature — and I saw the main character suddenly in myself, which was the point of the movie. Each one of us is her — a brain-driven thing who is a good person but who sometimes makes mistakes in life. I surely did that day.

I’m a member of some hobby-related groups involved in different activities. In one of my groups that day there’d been a private text thread on a topic we’re engaged in. The thread was initiated with upset and disdain over someone about something, and it invited the group to respond.

In a social setting, there are options for how the first person can choose to respond. They can mimic and validate the conversation initiator, trash their idea, respond from a place of neutrality, or keep their mouth shut. Take your pick.

What to do? How to choose? Which way to go? You mull over these for either a nanosecond or minutes or potentially days, depending.

That first responder to comment sets a tone for those following. If they don’t validate the person who started the conversation, it’s still an even playing field — one opinion versus another opinion. If they do validate the initiator, now you have a critical mass — two people versus no people. The third responder now must either choose sides or go against the masses. It’s tricky either way. Each subsequent response in the chat comes up against a growing mass of opinion, and the weight of how to respond grows. If everyone agrees one way, but you think the other way — what to do? If the group is mixed, what to do? How much does sharing your opinion matter? Are there any consequences for doing so?

This is the social system — a balancing act of which sub-group to join, which priorities to choose, who to support and who to leave behind, and if you’re angry enough, maybe even who to diss.

Social systems lead to social conundrums.

You ask: who do I want to be in this setting? What is more important to me? Which direction feels more exciting? Which do I agree with? What is the bigger goal here? These are all swimming like sharks in your mind and you sweat, and you dither. Or you don’t, depending on you, or how important this situation is, or whether you got sleep last night. Often, you grab one of those sharks in a flash — far speedier than you could ever be aware of.

In that online thread, I watched a few comments come in. They all supported — mimicked — the anger of the initial responder. There was a growing group consensus of rejection of the subject matter — and a barbed one — so how was I going to respond? Or should I simply keep my mouth shut?

To be clear, there was no external consequence of this conversational thread. Nobody would see it. It was a nothingburger in that we’d likely forget about it soon. However, it was a legitimate test of how I want to be in the world. Over my adulthood, I’ve grown ever more into someone who doesn’t want to spit more negativity into the solar system.

Oh, I complain. Just ask my kids what I was spitting and spewing the other day trying to learn a new drawing software. Don’t get me started! Instead, I’m talking more about condemnation of other people because they don’t fit precisely into what I understand about the world — yet. I’m not talking about dangerous people or grave injustices. I’m talking about all of us who don’t know everything there is to know about someone.

I don’t want to leave the earth having made it more cold, distant, and hostile. I want to have done the opposite.

But, like the lead character in Inside Out 2, I make mistakes sometimes, and it’s often due to following the crowd because to follow means I’ve gained entry, which makes me feel elevated somehow — cool, accepted, funny, in-the-know, smart, you name it. This is human, I know, and that day as I walked under the perfect blue sky, ruminating on the fact I’d just come from my computer at home where I’d typed out my message to the group — mimicking the barbs — I felt small and regretful.

As I wobbled on my tightened calves, an imperfect being in both calves and mouth, I asked the sky, “Why? Why did I enter the fray?”

It wasn’t such a complicated question — and there wasn’t a complicated answer. Sometimes I’ll decide against my long-term judgment in favor of my short-term judgment. There are all kinds of factors that influence this, but in the end, I’m left with having to assess and learn from the decisions I make.

I did that day, and I’m happy to say it went well. For one, I didn’t allow myself to dive into a deep self-flagellation stint. I pivoted this time and used the experience as an opportunity to understand more deeply how important not spewing barbs is to me — no matter how small. I let it go, not in the sense of demoting its importance, but in the sense that I dumped the self-judgment in exchange for the wisdom it held for me. These are the little gifts, as I call them.

So, thank you, missteps, my barbed mentors. Your lessons add up to a better life — to my beautiful, minuscule, beloved life. I couldn’t do it without you — and I’ll withhold my barbed comment regarding that. Practice makes possible.

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Have a great week, all.