Someone posted two very painful comments on my blog today that were personal attacks generated by something someone close to me had posted on a public message board. One of the comments was that I should kill myself and then the world should have bliss. My initial reaction was to curl up and cry both because someone would make such a painful and fairly random attack and because someone I loved had put personal information that could be used to hurt me on a public forum. My loved one’s intent was not to hurt my feelings and I’m sure that he had no clue that the comment would get back to me, but it is still very painful.
I have to admit that I started questioning myself after reading these comments because there was just enough truth in them to make me feel bad about myself. I started questioning my motives, my self worth, and everything about myself. I started feeling distinctly unlovable and as if there was no one in the world that cared about me.
That got old really quick and I realized that I had a choice at this moment in time: I could choose to let what some random person who didn’t know me impact me and shake me to my very core or I could choose to shake it off and feel compassion for someone with such obviously low self esteem. I realized that the person I was dealing with was obviously a troll who got some kind of pleasure out of attacking someone he/she doesn’t even know via the Internet. What kind of sick and twisted upbringing did this person have that they believe it is acceptable to randomly attack others? How much self loathing does this person have that the only way for him/her to feel good about themselves is to attack other people?
I choose to take my lesson from the gentleman in the concentration camp who in the midst of such horror and pain chose to thank god for not making him like the concentration camp guards who enjoyed inflicting pain on other people. I give thanks and count my blissings that I am a compassionate and loving person who believes in working towards betting the world instead of attacking other people. It is really hard to show compassion in the face of such an attack, but I have a choice and I choose to show compassion both toward the person who posted the attack and on the person who posted personal information online.
However, despite my compassionate bliss, I am not above posting a picture of the nasty little person who did this and I will not open up myself to such public attacks again and have chosen to turn on comment moderation so I will be reviewing all comments before they are posted.
Cairn by Cairn 