A-holes, let’s talk about it for a minute.
So, in nursing, you’re taught to never take what a patient says about you or to you personally. They’re most likely in pain, struggling mentally, or dealing with some kind of personality or cognitive alteration that affects the way they behave.
Being in healthcare for over 14 years, I’ve had my fair share of being yelled at, called stupid, and insulted in ways that would hopefully be appalling to most people. Then add in the abusive relationships, where I’ve been called just about every name you can think of, and some creative ones I hadn’t heard before. Throw my own self-loathing into the mix, and you could say I’ve developed pretty thick skin.
(Not to say I never get hurt, because I absolutely do. I think I’ve just gotten better at processing the pain and moving on from it faster.)
And now that I make public posts that sometimes reach hundreds of thousands of people, I inevitably have some really nasty things directed at me pretty much daily.
My question is: why?
Why choose to direct your pain, your negativity, or your cynicism toward someone else when you could just… say nothing at all?
And I’m not saying you should never disagree with anyone. You’re allowed to not like things. You’re allowed to criticize people, ideas, art, opinions, whatever. But you can do those things with kindness and fairness.
So why the cruelty?
I genuinely want to understand, because I’m the type of person who will quietly decide something isn’t for me and move on without a word unless it really ruined my day. And even then, I try my best to make sure whatever criticism I give is fair.
Is it just a bad day? Do some people feel a compulsion to say the cruel thing that crosses their mind instead of letting it go unsaid? Is cruelty always rooted in something deeper, or are some people simply comfortable being unkind?
I don’t know.
I just feel like we could all be a little kinder to one another.