What if you died today?

I don’t mean that as a threat or an ultimatum, but rather, what if you were the victim of a tragic accident and killed today?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m an incredibly optimistic person.  I never obsess about the worst case scenario.  I do, however; acknowledge that it could occur, but I factor in all possible outcomes and accept that it will be one of those.  The worst case and the best case normally don’t happen, it’s somewhere in the middle.  But what if you, or I, never came home again to see our loved ones?

Prior to the moment I had that thought I was working upstairs on Facebook to post and engage for some small businesses that I manage.  Before going downstairs I popped into my personal profile.

It was filled with the most depressing, angry, closed minded thoughts.  Oh, it’s just your friends on the right or left who were complaining about politics you may think.  And to an extent you are correct, except it wasn’t isolated to just one political party.  They were both complaining about how stupid the other side was relative to the issues that they disagreed with.  “all people this”, “I can’t believe….” and other rarely true gross generalizations populated the streams of otherwise intelligent people.

It’s not that I’m anti-social media.  I love social media.  On a personal level it is so simple to keep in touch with friends, family in addition to making tons of new friends or contacts.   Likewise, on a business level it’s great to network, share things and an irreplaceable tool to let others know about you.

However, what if you never came home again and your last post was some angry rant about something that you were unable to change anyway?   Aspects of those posts frustrated me because it’s just an echo chamber of people agreeing with each other, the spiral of silence as Pew Research Center calls it.  That study also touched on the fact that everyone was so angry.

I’ve got a couple friends who are wrestling with Cancer, a comic book author we like died suddenly last week and some friends have parents who are going into surgery.  That’s a little ironic because those friends and family who are sick are sharing the stories via social media.  But, against that backdrop, the trivial nature of people in the spiral of silence seemed even less significant.

I came down from the office where I had been working and was just about the leave the house to pick up the boys from school.  I looked at some of their pictures on the walls and the family portrait with my wife.  I then glanced down at the dogs sleeping on the floor and was suddenly, really, deeply thankful.

I wondered if those people online were happy.  I know that they’ve got something to be thankful and happy for.  They’re parents too, have jobs, pets, hobbies, family, a great place to live-there is something for all of them to be happy or thankful for.  You too have something to be happy about that can counterbalance the negative things that clog your online activity.

A friend of mine always ends his conversation with his wife with “I love you”.  One day I asked him why he did that and he said that just in case it was the last time he speaks with her that’s what he wants his last words to be.  It would be nice if some folks took that attitude and applied it to their online conversations too.