I once took a class in my undergrad at Mount Allison University, nestled in amongst the Tantramar Marshes of border-town Sackville, N.B., where the topic of "healthy debate" came up. The way it was defined on that day ultimately shaped the way I would quote-unquote "argue" or "state my case" in the quarter-century since — as a student, a writer, a friend, a partner, a mom. The analogy presented was this: We are all entitled to swing our arm ("This is what I believe."). However, we are not entitled to swing our arm to the point at which it hits someone else in the face. ("This is what I believe. What you believe is wrong and evil and stupid.")
In other words: I am right. You are wrong. I am smart. You are dumb. I am informed. You are not. My God is light. Your God is darkness. It's in this place — where verbal hand meets figurative skin — that healthy debate ends, and arrogance begins.
As an active believer in the potential for good that exists in the power of social media, I log in daily. As one of those self-employed types, I depend on it in part as a megaphone for that ghastly task known as shameless self-promotion. I fundraise for causes of which I am a crusader. A displaced Maritimer living on Canada's West Coast, I keep in touch with friends I love and family I miss. And, OK, I admit it: I post photos of my two young daughters with syrupy captions like: "Dial 9-1-1. Someone just overdosed on cuteness," and am well aware that, with every such post, eyes roll nationwide.
Tragically, however, each day when I log on with the intention of making positive connections, I am increasingly left to wade through the pollution of angry posts — a landfill of garbage that, even when disguised as a cartoon or a meme, repetitively hit me in the face. It's like opening a photo album and being forced to dodge rocks.
The only commonality I care about when it comes to the members of my life's posse is kindness.
Most recently when I clicked on the page of someone who means a lot to me, I unwittingly walked into a series of comments that indirectly identified me — and anyone who shares in my political beliefs — as "a libtard"; someone the country needs to be saved from. Rather than being grateful for the miracle of a fast update from across the miles, I logged off, disheartened.
On a personal level, I do not particularly care what your political beliefs are. Some of my best friends are fellow "libtards." Some are vocal conservatives. And yet we somehow co-exist peacefully, different dots seeded on the same spectrum, recognizing that despite its flaws, at the end of the day, we still live in the best country on the planet. We swing our collective arms. But no one ends up with a black eye.
Nor do I disrespect your ethnicity, your spirituality, your sexuality, or what nutritional practices you adhere to. As a vegetarian, I still manage to find it in my heart to love friends who believe in the meat-and-dairy-laden Atkins Diet. (Whaaat?!) The only commonality I care about when it comes to the members of my life's posse is kindness. As far as I am concerned, when Emma Lazarus wrote the words emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty — "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me," — in no draft did she include an asterisk that lead to mousetype at the poem's conclusion: "Unless they have opinions that differ from my own."
When you post your cartoons and your memes and your links to questionable sources that spout questionable statistics that support questionable theories, you may think you're sparking "healthy debate." You're not. You're a 21st century cyber-vandal with a can of spray paint.
Because what if — really, just what if — when we die, and we meet whatever version of God we believe in, or don't believe in, or encounter whatever spiritual whisper that lingers in the ether, what if the message we all get — gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, liberal, conservative, urbanite, farmer, vegan, paleo — is some variation of: "Your job was never to judge. Your job was only to be kind." Won't so many of us feel like ginormous dorks then?! In that moment, how many of us will beg for a chance to log on, one last time, if only to delete the garbage dump of anger — attacks, accusations, comments, criticisms, claims — that we will otherwise invariably leave in our wake when we go. Our legacy will be a heap of self-righteousness and cruel "shares."
Please, go ahead and share your beliefs. But aim to do so with the combined elegance and eloquence synonymous with big thinking and compassion. Do so with the humble modesty that comes from an unshakeable knowing that — as I also learned as a student that day at Mount Allison University — "your truth does not deny my truth." By all means, what you choose to create with your can of spray paint is entirely your business. But if it's steeped in anything other than open-mindedness and kindness, as far as I am concerned, I just don't follow.
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