Backlash

In 2008 I took this thing called strength-finders. One of those personality assessment kinds of things that tells you something about your strengths so you can better understand how you can best impact the world. My number one strength is empathy. My number two was connectedness. My number three was futuristic. Basically, that means that my empathy drives my compassion to build community and envision a bright future. This is likely why I "can't even" lately.

I don't know when things got so complicated. I remember in grade school, we knew that picking on people was wrong. We knew to consider other people's feelings when we speak or make decisions. We were taught not to tease each other and pick fights.

I guess we forgot. It seems like we forgot. My Facebook looks like it forgot. I've seen people calling each other butthurt, uneducated, bigots, villans, babies, entitled. I saw one person post something about how refreshing it is to see so many people unafraid of being politically incorrect on Wednesday, then on Thursday they were genuinely hurt that people were treating them meanly. I saw another person post one day that they were so afraid of people attempting to hurt them and the next day ravenously provoking others., I've seen myself driving all over the street emotionally, wanting to brow-beat people one minute and stand cover over them the next. I don't know about you, but it feels to me like something altogether different is controlling all of us lately. I feel a little like I've lost my mind.

I feel like what most of us want is to be seen and respected.  So here are some things I would like to do.

I would like to invite you to answer the following questions.

1. What feeling have you felt the most over the last four days?
2. What do you think has caused this feeling in you the most?
3. What do you think would make our country better for everyone regardless of their age, gender, race, religion, sexual identity, and political affiliation?
4. What can you do to manifest your answer to number three?
You can add how old you are, your political affiliation, religion or any other factoid you think will enlighten me about your answer.

You can post it in the comments, or send it to me in an email (jiggsm@gmail.com) or post it on Facebook. I got a lot of very moving responses from both sides of the aisle to my last post. This time I want to hear about this specifically. I don't care if what you have to say might be ugly or have bad language, you can't offend me. I simply want to know what you think, really. youll be doing me a favor by helping me restore my faith in people again. Do not respond to other people's ideas. This is a listening session, not a debate.

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