My regular cycling class instructor is still away. Her Instagram has had one post from the last week, a compilation of the best bits of a trip to a Mediterranean resort with three other people. There is a great deal that could be gleaned from these pictures if someone were of a mind to do so. I’m not that person, and have never been so.
In the other writer space in which I live, I read a series of diatribes last night from a selection of adults who seemed to have issue with those people who take pictures in art galleries that a) are of them looking at the art or b) are simply of the art themselves. It’s as if, to them, those people are more interested in themselves, or that people forget that these spaces have been created to exclusively house a unique experience.
Both of these things should never be a problem because it should be none of anybody else’s damn business what other people choose to do in their own time.
I say this a lot, so apologies if this is not new. The best piece of advice I was ever given in therapy was simple: if someone is offended by what you do, that’s their problem and not yours. Recently someone challenged me with the ‘well what if what you are doing is illegal?’ to which the answer is a simple ‘well, that’s not offence, is it, it’s AN offence and shoo with your semantics’. Fact remains, I’m not the boss of any of you. That’s your job.
Telling people how to live their lives, or passing summary judgement on other people’s choices is the #1 issue on social media and it always has been. Print and broadcast news use it to sell their wares, TV uses it as a hook in everything, literature loves to wave it about as a conceit. Jane Austin’s work would not be remembered today if not for the fact that she did like using the stupidity of opinion to build a story.
I think Austen would fit right into the modern world.
Right now, social media is a particular flavour of Hell I am doing my best to completely avoid, but the push is inescapable. If I am silent, it is culpability. If I choose to state my lack of desire to comment on social issues, I am somehow weak or incapable of grasping complex arguments. Hell is other people, that much has always been true. Right now, however, it’s also the choices I am forced to make in order to remain successful.
It doesn’t help that lots of the places where I’d like to be able to work are run by people who think certain types of people should be systematically eradicated from existence. Someone I respect a lot said on social media that the reason publishing doesn’t want to change is that the white people with the money and the power only share it amongst themselves. There’s a truth in that which is hard to argue. It’s not judgement but fact.
So, I am left with my own outlets in which to make progress.
This road was never built to be an easy ride, and if it were, the satisfaction at achievement would be hugely diminished. On the way, more and more, it is should be the default to not throw anything (abuse or otherwise) at the people you pass. In fact, what should happen is that everyone embraces the shortcomings they perceive and uses them as an incentive to grow.
Lifting people makes far more sense and is far less viscous than attacking their choices, but some people need to feel a sense of moral superiority in their judgements. I am, and never will be, that person.
Let people do what they wish, and say no more.
