There's one of those ecards floating around with a picture of a man and some children looking at an open book, and the card reads (and I cringe to actually type this out): "Once upon a time Mommies & Daddies could beat their kid's asses so they learned to respect others. But these days they can't and that's why so many people suck. The End."
I've only had to see this card pass through my little corner of the internet three times thankfully; as every time I do see it, it makes me want to throw up and my blood pressure goes up. I swear I actually have a physiological response. I can only imagine
it's how certain people, people for whom the subject hits a little too
close to home, feel about rape jokes. (For the record I don't find those in the least bit funny either.) The first time I saw it was on Facebook. I immediately signed out (which I almost never did at the time) and created a new account with my married name. It has really bugged me that Facebook would not let me change my name to my legal, married name anyway. It was actually kind of a relief. It was a long time coming. I needed a low drama way to get away from a lot of the stuff that was being posted on Facebook by people I knew, but I didn't want to lose the opportunity to connect with the people I find positive, supportive, and uplifting. It was a great decision and I've logged onto that account with decreasing frequency ever since. I will probably end up deleting it before too much longer. The second time was on my new Facebook. I ended up hiding updates from the person in question. And today I just saw it on Pinterest. The unfortunate thing about Pinterest is there is no "hide" option. If you don't want to see one thing in particular, you have to unfollow the board it cropped up on, and if it pops up on another board you follow, you have to unfollow it, and so on. So I opted to leave a polite comment about how unfunny, and inaccurate it was (Corporal punishment does not actually inspire respect in children, or anyone else for that matter. I promise. Scientific studies have been done.). Maybe someone will see my comment and think twice about chuckling or sharing it.
You know what? Empathy is actually pretty easy, when you put your mind to it. All you have to do is imagine that you are the other person. I'll admit I'm pretty new to empathy. My gut reaction was to fire off in my comment with anger and outrage. But then I remembered two things: one was of course that responding in anger would have been a direct
contradiction to the message I'm trying to convey, and at this point in
my life the message is more important to me than my own emotional
release. The second thing being that I could recall not that long ago being someone who would
laugh at that and maybe even share it on whatever social networking site
without putting too much thought into it. So I decided to use a little empathy towards the person who had pinned it, because I could remember being them. Once I put myself in their shoes, it was really easy. I could share the information with them that they may honestly not have known or thought about from that perspective, and I could do so without trying to tear them down and make them feel badly, thus making it much more likely that they would actually hear my message and take it to heart, and maybe even someday pass it along to someone else! It was actually kind of empowering to realize that I could potentially do all of that.
I can't imagine how it could be any easier to practice empathy than when the other person is a child. We were all children at some point after all. I mean sure, maybe it's hard to put yourself into the shoes of someone with a different gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, political beliefs, etc. But who can't imagine being a child?
Why then, do we as a society, think it's ok to treat children like garbage? Why do we think that the way to inspire goodness in children is by treating them with cruelty? Why do we think that if only kids were beaten more, humiliated more, or just plain have their spirits crushed and broken that we as a society would all "suck" less? Why do we think that in order to bring up people who are kind, empathetic, and caring of others that we must treat them with cruelty and thoughtlessness? Does anybody else see the logical disconnect here?
Perhaps as a child you were never hit or intimidated by a parent or trusted adult caregiver. If
so, then you're one of the lucky ones. Statistics suggest that you are
in a very small minority. But if you're like most of us, you can
probably remember being torn down verbally, threatened, hit, or worse. Before you click "share" or "repin", please try to remember how you felt at those times. Do you remember feeling particularly inspired to do better for the adult in question, or do you remember feeling fear, sadness, anger or hatred? Do you remember thinking that what was happening to you was funny? Something to joke about? Please think before you share.
I couldn't publish this post without also pointing out that there's a grammatical error in the disgusting ecard. Ten points to whoever spots it. Hint: Does anyone think that the author of the ecard would have learned to use apostrophes properly if only they were beaten more? Probably not. :)
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