"Be That Person"

I like to think I have reached a point where I no longer absorb snippy comments. Often, if on the receiving end, I look intently at the other and wonder, "Golly, she must be really hurting about something." 

Anonymous trolls, the most cowardly of the cowardly, offset their own misery by depositing nasty little statements here and there. This cooking blogger posted a video taking such a one to task, by sharing her own burdens and appealing to the world to just be freakin' nice.  

Dr. Perri Klass, M.D. ("What Knitting Can Teach Us About Parenting"), is a pediatrician; to unwind, she browses through a knitting website, where she noted that despite the, er, straight-up ugliness of the various posted projects, the vast majority of comments are nice. Yet she doesn't see that empathy outside, as parents are usually subject to sniffing disdain if their toddler has a public meltdown (an occupational hazard, and to be expected). 

I would like to suggest that everyone who has posted more than one comment in the last two years passing judgment on other parents learn to knit as soon as possible. Winter is coming, and we all need scarves. There are some really nice, easy patterns on Ravelry, and you can download many of them free — and then you can choose your yarn and put your heart into it and make something beautiful.

With luck, the people who see it in real life and the ones who admire it in the photos you post online will respect the effort you put into it, and offer praise and encouragement. And if they don’t have anything nice to say, they won’t say anything at all.

Whenever I now get that judgy voice in my head, I'm disappointed in myself. Then I choose to see a quality about the other that I am forced to admire. And I can.