I get it. Everyone is tired, mentally and physically, after
a year of nothing but Covid-19 pandemic news and one of the most divisive and
destructive presidential elections in American history. Tempers are frayed,
patience is thin, and energy levels are low. I am experiencing all of these
things, and I know others are too. The toughest thing to deal with has not been
the pandemic, strangely enough, but the sadness of coming to terms with the
realization that there are friends and acquaintances that I really no longer
want to know or have in my life. I just don’t know how to tell them so I
haven’t for the time being. The friends were never close friends, but they
belong to an earlier time in my life, and at that time, they were kind
people—kind to me and kind to others. We reconnected on Facebook after many
years of no contact. The people they are now could not be described as kind. I
would rather describe them as hard-hearted, cynical, critical, and mean. Unfortunately, they were and still are Trump supporters who bought into
the ‘Stop the steal’ conspiracy and all of the other nonsensical conspiracy
theories that abound. They won’t condemn Marjorie Taylor Greene for her wild and
divisive rhetoric and nonsensical viewpoints. They won’t condemn the hoisting
of the Confederate flag in the Capitol building during the Capitol invasion.
Heck, they haven’t condemned the invasion itself, and that by itself is cause
for concern. They are still posting aggressive and bullying posts on social media that push the 'election was stolen' conspiracy, that Biden is a terrible person--the entire package.
As I recently wrote to a friend of mine, I want friends
whose core of moral decency is similar to mine. I don’t have much time for
anything else the older I get. Good friends challenge us to see the other sides
of issues, but in a positive way, not in a mean-spirited or negatively critical
way. Not in a bullying way. If they love us and like us, they will not be ‘in-your-face’
aggressive toward us. If they love us, they will not be deliberately unkind or
mean to us. You are rude, mean or aggressive to people
you don’t really like; you don’t have to be, but if you are, it’s because you
don’t like them. If you say you love or like someone, then you will strive to
treat them well, to be nice, to be respectful, to be positive when criticizing
them—all those things that make up common moral decency. Yes, we can be tired
or exhausted, but the old adage, ‘count to ten’ rather than say something you
might regret, is very applicable for situations that can annoy us with loved
ones. How much do you value the relationship you have with others? Continual
rudeness, aggressiveness, unkindness or deliberately provoking or needling
others are simply ways of telling them that they don’t matter to us, that they
are of little value to us.
