It's been a while since I ranted, which is possibly a good thing because maybe it means that I'm taking things more easily as I get older - talking of which here's a great quote from the Radio Times for next week. Interviewing the actor Adrian Dunbar, and after a brief discussion of his good health considering his current age the interviewer asks 'so you would recommend being 61 then?' To which the response, is 'I'd recommend being 30 if you were giving me a choice'. Dunbar 1 - Interviewer 0 I feel.
But I digress. Yesterday a real life friend posted this on her Facebook timeline. To be fair, it's not something she created herself, she re-posted it from some page or other that specialises in platitudes and motivational speak. But she had the choice to repost it or not, and she chose to post it.
Passive Aggression lifted to an art form. Almost.
My first reaction, lasting only seconds, was to feel guilty. My second reaction, which lasted slightly longer, was to feel got at. My third reaction, which hasn't actually left me yet, was to feel angry.
I am doing my best to check in with family and friends. E-mails, phone calls, private messages on Facebook and Ravelry, brief letters in pretty cards to brighten far flung letter boxes and let people know I am thinking of them. And I don't want anyone to think I'm not on the receiving end of similar gestures from friends, because I am and it's lovely. I appreciate the time and care people are putting in to getting in touch and telling me how they are coping and asking how I'm doing.
Few of us can do it all. None of us can have done it all yet. But none of us needs this sort of garbage floating about trying to put the hard word on others for not pulling their weight when it comes to keeping in touch. Because, apart from anything else, would you like to guess how many times the friend who re-posted this on her timeline has been in touch with me in the current crisis to find out how we are? If your guess is somewhere between -1 and 1, you are correct. Stones and Glasshouses, friends, Stones and Glasshouses.
Hear hear! No one needs guilt on top of cabin fever, especially not from people who aren’t following their own advice...
ReplyDeleteI hope that choosing to 'keep in touch' by reading this blog and making the odd comment is sufficient? It seems right for me anyway :-) And as I am the archetypal antisocial cow you are getting more than most of the folks I know!
ReplyDeletegosh yes, it's wonderful that you read it and comment occasionally. I love that. I really wasn't getting at anybody except perhaps the sort of people who post this stuff on FB and use it to get at people, while not actually making any effort themselves. We aren't anti-social, but we're not very sociable and you are not a cow of any descrption as I have reason to know.
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