Practice Kindness. Always.

As we enter into the holiday season I think it's super easy to focus on what we are thankful for, giving to others, and we definitely make a great effort to be kind to one another. It's this kindness that needs to be practiced year round. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Mother Teresa, in fact, sometimes I really suck at extending grace to others but something happened over the weekend that caused me a moment of pause.

I'm going to not give so many details about this situation because it wouldn't be fair. On Friday I quickly put something on social media and maybe my wording was not up to AP grammatical standards and was more in line with the 140 character world we live in. Someone called me on it and said I did a bad job getting my information across.  A harmless enough comment but for some reason it really, really bothered me.

1) I don't want to mess up and I like to do a good job. I mean, aren't we all like that? Constructive criticism is helpful, flat out telling someone they did a bad job is not.

2) The reason I was rushed while writing this particular piece of social media was because I needed to get home because my cat of 19-years had taken a turn for the worse and I was needing to get her to the vet ASAP.

Now. Let me just say this.  I have a pretty thick skin.  I can and have handled pretty much every insult thrown my way.  The other thing is the person who said that had no idea what was going on behind the post so this is where I extend grace.  See it's the blessing and curse of social media.  Information can be shared in ways many never thought possible but it also gives people a forum to just say mean things.  I'm pretty sure that if this person and I had seen each other in public those words never would have been said.  They would have seen my clothes covered in cat hair and my eyes tired from crying.

The greatest lesson I learned during this short exchange taught me something that I have always heard but rarely think about when I'm reacting....Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be Kind. Always.