I Left Junior HIgh Many Years Ago

This is a pet peeve of mine. I am no longer in junior high or even high school and yet so much of that mentality seems to exist especially on Facebook. There are cliques and groups and bullying and you name it. But, my pet peeve is this junior high attitude that people want to tell you who you can talk to and who you can not talk to.

I am open and what you see is what you get. If you know me, you know I am honest and that I do not play games. I am also an adult and capable of deciding who I will talk to and who I will not talk to. I am not going to drop people just because someone else does not like them. If you really are my friend, then you KNOW me well enough to know I am not going to betray you and that I am not involved in ugliness. I am simply refusing to hurt others just because others do not like them.

And if you think that trying to force me to choose whom I talk to works with me…think again. I am an adult. I talk to many people…not daily…maybe even not weekly but I certainly do not just block people because other friends do not like them. I believe in loving all and in trying to be kind and open enough so that maybe some thing I say or do in love will touch a spark in someone else and leave them feeling better. I can not base my actions on what others do.

image from reecerants.blogspot.com

This is one reason I do not care for Facebook. It brings out the junior high mentality, the paranoia and the insecurities in people. And so, what do they do? They try to exert control to make themselves feel better. Bad thing is…I do not control well.   I do not hate anyone. I do not waste my time on hate. So, if you hate someone, do not expect me to hate them just because you do. Life is too short for that. I do not approve of everything everyone does. Heck, I do not always approve of everything I do because I am human. That is how we learn.

But most of all, please do not act all “Christian”  and yet, you are hating others and want others to ostracize them too. That is NOT Christian. Jesus sat down with the sinner…and folks we are all sinners. I try to treat everyone the same. I may not agree with all you do but I am not going to disrespect you for your beliefs, nor am I going to hate you for your actions, nor am I going to refuse to see you as a creation of God and refuse to see any goodness in you. Is it not time people stopped the hate and started seeing that others have good in them too. We can not do the “say one thing and act another” for it soon catches up with us.

Thank God freedom of thought and speech is still alive. Yes, it comes with responsibility and with consequences. If I do not like what you say or what you do…I simply am not part of that. But, I still believe in the innate goodness of people and so even when I do not like what you do, I still believe you have good in  you.

And while I still believe in the goodness in the world…I also still believe in myself being part of that goodness in the world. And that means, I should not contribute to the ugliness in the world by junior high attitudes and by hating others and by acting like I think I am better when I am being just as judgmental if I try to get everyone to hate someone and yet say I am a kind and loving person. Does not jive does it? And it certainly is not very Christian. What is that quote “love the person and hate the sin”. Is it not time we started seeing the actions and hating the actions instead of the person?

The Three Most Beautiful Words To Me

The other day Kate commented to me that I had a “good, kind, and honest heart”.  That brought tears to my eyes and means more to me than if they had said I was smart or beautiful or talented. These are three traits I value highly in myself and in those I choose to be around me and to have someone think that about me…made me feel like I had been handed the lottery.

image from
http://moonpointer.com

All three of these things I think are far more important than looks, financial gains, talents, achievements for they are about your character and I think if we work on our character and like the quote box above says…if we work on goodness and truth then beauty will take care of itself. I want my beauty to shine from the inside out for I have seen many with the perfect makeup and perfect hairdo and the perfect body and not one shred of kindness, honesty or goodness shining out of them.

“Being good does not consist in not committing any fault; rather in knowing to amend one’s self” 

ST. John Bosco

I think being good, kind, honest ….all three of those…means we have the moral character to correct things we do wrong and to make amends when we have hurt and to realize that we are imperfect beings but that we do our best to correct the things we have done that are not truthful or unkind or just plain bad or ugly. That is my goal. I may not always achieve it..but I do try and so that made Kate’s words mean even more to me.

image from www.rishikajain.com

I absolutely adore this picture for it shows so much love and caring. I love the quote too for sometimes…even when you think you are right…sometimes it is kinder to let the other person be right in their own way. I find today that some people are so intent on arguing everything you say that those who are being argued against soon quit trying to express how they feel. I became that way at one point in my life. I figured why try if every time I opened my mouth someone was telling me how I needed to do it this way or that way. Being right is not always the most important but being kind is.

I do believe in being honest with friends for if we can not be honest with friends  then we don’t have much of a friendship. And that is where the true test of friendship comes in. Either we want real friends or we want yes people in our lives and I prefer the real friends.

image from www.dbgreetings.com

I have posted before on how honesty is important to me. My phrase..don’t lie to me and don’t steal from me, whether it is my heart, my time, my money, my possessions, my work…no matter what…..I say often. I think that is why I have such a deep emotional reaction to those that lie…like “The Woman Who Wasn’t There” and others that lie or exaggerate for whatever reasons. Values seem to be missing so much today. I can remember chasing someone down to hand them money they dropped, or telling a cashier that they gave me too much money back. And yet, I see people today who think that it is cool to keep the money and it is stealing..cheating…and lying. I can remember one son who under peer pressure stole something from a local store in the little town we lived in. I not only made him take it back and apologize. I told him he needed to volunteer to clean up their parking lot for a couple of weeks to show that he was truly sorry. Yes, my son was embarrassed. I was embarrassed that he did that but he was more embarrassed that he had to go face up to what he had done. But, that lesson stuck with him from then on and he remembers it to this day and talks about how it helped him value being honest over other things.

image from www.quotesnsayings.net

Doing right is so important to me. Took me years to develop the feelings I have about kindness, honesty and goodness because as youngsters and especially teens, we are taught through peer pressure to think that being called good, kind, honest and NOT beautiful and popular and gorgeous is an insult. What a sad thing to me that so much is focused on superficial things when not enough is focused on the character.

“it takes a lifetime to build a reputation but only moments to destroy it“

Kate, your words inspire me to keep working on those traits that I think are so important…goodness, kindness and honesty. I thank you for your words. They touched my heart in a tremendous way. You brought tears to my eyes…the good kind.  The words mean the most to me of all compliments that I have ever received for they mean you are looking inside me and seeing my heart.

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