Be Careful Both of What you Advocate and Berate

This is a thought that flashed across my mind quite unexpectedly sometime last week while scrolling quickly through my Facebook News Feed. It sprang to mind when a friend’s post on vaccination caught my eye.  This is not the time or place for me to elaborate on my personal story and stance on vaccines – I’ll save that for my personal blog.  What was, however, instantly glaringly apparent to me was this:  wherever people gather en masse, there you will find opposing opinions, polarizations of ideas and experiences.  Social media has not facilitated this, it has merely highlighted it.
We tend to congregate around ideas and find ourselves drawn to those whose opinions and/or perspectives mirror or are at least in some way, congruent with our own.

Glance across social networks and the evidence of “two camps” existing for almost any given debateable topic abounds – whether the vaccine debate, religious beliefs, political affiliations, sexual orientation right down to opposing schools of thought on parenting styles or fashion sense.

While our differences ensure there’s never a dull moment, they create the illusion of separation. In reality, we have more in common that we sometimes care to admit because no matter where you stand personally on any given topic, one thing remains:   you have a story.  It’s your story. Unique to you. But what we have in common is that we each have one.  And every day that we live, our story is unfolding, it is becoming.

For those who use social media regularly...[read more]

(First published on SA Bloggers)