Blogs: the salve that can wound.

I have only recently begun blogging again with comfort. I, myself, have been struggling to try to understand the reasons for this. It has only been with the occurrence of recent events that some degree of comprehension for this lack of verbal expression has come to me. To wit, I'd been in a shitty mood, and I didn't feel like dumping my excrement for all the world to look at and contemplate.

There are many reasons for blogging, and I have used most of them. For me, however primarily, a blog can be a diary--an expression of thoughts and feelings in a public forum as one tries to work them through. Sometimes, the feedback of others act as a reality check. Sometimes, the "you are being a dumb-ass" type of reply is the best kind of reply we can receive. Hopefully the replier will take the time to elucidate the reasons for my dumb-assedness. But anything that helps with my introspection can be a useful means for self-growth.

Blogging is, however, by its very nature, a public event. I am always fully aware that every word I say in a blog has an audience. Additionally, what we say in the course of a blog has the potential to influence the reader. By and large, I know who my readers are. And I will not deny that my blogs have been attempts to influence these readers in some way. Sometimes they have been attempts to convey insights. At other times, they have been direct attempts to cheer some of my readers up. Other posts have been attempts to show cleverness or to elicit accolades. I say this without shame, for, as I have stated repeatedly, I am utterly shameless.

What I have not used my posts for, or have at least not tried to, was to elicit pain, or to cause others to feel bad about themselves. When I created this blog, I was given the opportunity to put in a brief, “about me,” statement. The statement I came up with was something I felt was the core of my personality: “I get the most joy out of giving joy. I experience the most pain when I am unable to relieve the pain of another.”

As time has gone on, I have come to realize that, in these two sentences, I have really summed up that which is “me”. This statement truly expresses that which drives me. Looked at superficially, the statement makes me sound pretty damned good. If one analyzes the statement more deeply, however, one can see that it reveals my vulnerabilities, my weaknesses, and my flaws.

I also consider myself to be, quote unquote, a "man", whatever that means. To me, it means that I don't like to whine or complain or beg for sympathy in my posts. For several months, my life circumstances have made me want to do just that. It is by deliberate effort that I don't write these negative posts. Negativity begets negativity, both in myself and in others. I don't want sympathy...I want to break the cycle of negative feelings in myself.

To wit, to correlate to the above statements, it stands that I cannot bear to bring pain to another. Pain, however, is unavoidable. My attempts to avoid pain in one invariably cause pain in another, or cause pain in myself. Hence, I am slow to respond to injustice when injustice exists. I ostrich-ize myself, and take actions that pretend the pain does not exist rather than calling others out on it.

On a parallel line of thought, I have seen the kind of pain that the posts of others can cause, even innocently. The tendency to state ones feelings of negativity toward another, only to acknowledge that these feelings of negativity are wrong, does not negate the fact that the feelings of negativity still exist and can still be hurtful toward the person they are felt against. Often these posts are met with sympathetic replies toward the poster. The one who may be hurt, however, does not receive sympathy, and does not have an equal venue to defend oneself.

I acknowledge that this post is directed at certain persons. I have deliberately edited it to be not as direct as it was originally intended, as the posts I speak of are in the past, the poster's see their errors, and the healing of the wounds has begun. I do not wish to reopen these wounds, but I also wish to take preventive measures to keep this kind of wounding from happening again.

Blogging can be a powerful tool for self-growth. If we are not careful, it can also be used as passive-aggressive weapon. While we are of course free to state whatever we want in a blog, I urge others to be carefully consider whether the words we blog are true to the person we want to be.

This is, admittedly, a soap box post. I'd urge you to respond if you feel misrepresented in any way, or if you feel that I am wrong in any of my statements, or if you feel that something important was left unsaid (be careful here, though). But beyond this I'd prefer not to dwell on this issue. What's done is done. As far as I'm concerned, the less said about it from this point forward, the better it is for getting on with our lives.

Live well, love well, and try not to eat too much food high in saturated fat.