Recently, one of the themes of a lot of the teachers I’ve been working with has been to find things you enjoy doing, and things you don’t enjoy doing, and do more of the things you enjoy, and less of the things you don’t. Sounds simple, right? But so many of us don’t do it. Maybe “enjoy doing” isn’t the right phrase, exactly; it’s more like “things where, after you do them, you feel more nourished”. For example, in general when I exercise, I feel better about myself and the world. So, more exercise.
And one of the things that I’m really realizing I do not enjoy, and do not find nourishing at all, is arguing with people on Facebook. I just really don’t like it. It makes me feel awful and it just never seems to lead to anything good. I don’t mind putting up my opinions on Facebook, and in theory I’m all for public debate, but in practice it just seems to bring out the worst in people. In the last week alone I’ve had words used around me like “bullshit” and “idiot”. And these are from *friends*, people I theoretically know who are on my side. I feel like a lot of the things people say to me, and about me, are things they would never say if we were just hanging out together in person. And even when it’s somebody else’s post, when I see something that just seems wrong or hurtful, it hurts me and makes me feel bad, even if I ignore it and don’t respond. Three times in the last week I’ve started writing something; some response or post, and then I just deleted it because it just makes me feel bad to even get involved. I hate retreating from the world, but I just feel like something about the Facebook paradigm really makes it hard to have any kind of meaningful conversation. People are so *angry* these days, and even when I agree with them, the anger itself is so overwhelmingly negative that it just makes me feel tired and awful. I’ve read several articles recently directly correlating Facebook time with depression and anger, and I feel like this is one of the reasons. I don’t really know how to fix it, and maybe I don’t care. The solution is easy: time to take a break and enjoy the ocean.