Yes, you can ‘do you.’ But why not be kind?

I have three child­hood friends with whom I shared my entire past. These girls have been a part of my life since before I could ride a bike — in the case of one of them, since before I was pot­ty-trained. As so often hap­pens as we grow up, our lives have gone in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, and now I see them only a few times a year when we get togeth­er to catch up.

All of these ladies have live­ly, vivid mem­o­ries of how mean I was as a child. When we get togeth­er, they love to rem­i­nisce on how I always “told it like it is,” how I was “bru­tal­ly hon­est,” and how many peo­ple I “put in their place” over the years. This notion both­ered me. I don’t think of myself as a mean per­son, but who does? I don’t think of myself as some­one who puts peo­ple in their place. It both­ered me so much that I did some self-reflection. 

And you know what? They were right. I was mean. I was bru­tal­ly hon­est (with a heavy empha­sis on the “bru­tal” part). It wasn’t that I lied. I always said exact­ly what I thought. The prob­lem is that I thought very unkind things. I like to think that I have grown since then and that I more often think kind things than unkind ones. It is a jour­ney that prob­a­bly nev­er ends, but I will keep slog­ging up that hill because I think it is worth it.

A few years ago, I was hik­ing with an acquain­tance. This per­son com­plained that the real prob­lem with the world today is that you can no longer say what you want to say. When pressed for an exam­ple, he replied, “You can’t call peo­ple fag­got or retard­ed any­more because it is (he did air quotes) ‘offen­sive’.”

At the time, I mere­ly respond­ed that I was OK with a world in which you can’t say those things. But now that I have pon­dered the inter­ac­tion, I have a dif­fer­ent view. The truth is, you can say those things. But why on earth would you want to? Why would you want to use words that are hurt­ful and unkind?

Social media is filled with mean com­ments and hurt­ful posts. People seem to feel empow­ered to behave in the most awful ways when sit­ting behind a phone, tablet, or com­put­er screen. A harm­less or well-inten­tioned post or news sto­ry is met with long strings of real­ly antag­o­nis­tic, cru­el com­ments. These com­ments usu­al­ly don’t add any­thing to the con­ver­sa­tion, or, when they do con­tribute to the con­ver­sa­tion, do so in a way that just hurts feel­ings and caus­es pain. When chal­lenged on this unkind­ness, the most com­mon respons­es seem to be in defense of “doing what I want” and “keep­ing it real.” I have seen such com­ments as:

“I will do me.”

“This is a free country.”

“I can say what I want.”

Folks are absolute­ly with­in their rights to be mean and hurt­ful on social media. They are free to be mean and hurt­ful in all areas of their lives. But why would they want to? 

I don’t want to live in a world where peo­ple can­not say what they gen­uine­ly think. I want to live in a world where what peo­ple think is kind. 

I don’t want to live in a world where peo­ple don’t say what they want to say. I want to live in a world where what peo­ple want to say is kind. 

I don’t want peo­ple to be any­thing less than their authen­tic selves, but I want those selves to be kind. If a per­son being them­self spreads hurt and pain, I don’t want them to be themself. 

I want them to find some­one else to be.