Diversity「A Random Book 」

on the internet and forgiveness

something happened today (nothing related to ME personally—it was an online thing) that's been making me think about forgiveness. 

this rant with written with two people in mind: one is famous, one is not. 

you know the saying "forgive and forget"? no one practices that anymore. all it takes is one mistake, one issue, for a person's whole world to fall apart. for people on the internet to turn away from them, and call them unworthy of their respect.

everyone deserves respect. (unless they've committed murder or something but that's a whole other discussion) unless this person is your like closest friend, you don't know them well enough to judge all their decisions from a reasonable basis. your feelings may get ahead of you, but no one deserves to be booted out of a place that they've made their home.

and it's painful. it really is. even i don't know the true pain someone suffers. i only know a fraction of that, and the feeling is awful. and sometimes, that can drive people to do more things because of pure desperation. 

people's past mistakes can't leave them on the internet. no matter where they go, there will be a person—all it takes is ONE person—to whisper to the new acquaintances of their past mistakes. to shatter any hope they have of recovering. no one deserves to be shamed their entire life.

and yes, that person may have done horrible things. they may have affected another person's life in negative ways. but we don't know that person. we don't know their motivations, their issues, their feelings. but from a screen, it's so easy to just drop a person. it's so easy to ghost them, to ignore them—let's face it.

online relationships are FRAGILE.

it's so easy to ghost other people. it's so easy to make split-second decisions you can't take back because it's the internet. it's easy to not realize that the persona on the screen has an actual PERSON behind it. and that person has feelings. they have concerns. they have motivations. they don't act horribly for no reason. 

but it's so easy to assume that they've done so with the sole purpose of ruining another person's life. because we aren't looking that person in the face, seeing the look on their face, the tone of their voice. it's so easy to treat them like an unfeeling robot. 

and it doesn't even just apply to small-level communities. look at the internet, at the celebrities. past mistakes are constantly uncovered, throwing the perpetrator into the spotlight. forcing them to apologize for things they regret, forcing them to suffer from hundreds and hundreds of comments SLAMMING them for something they may already regret.

you can't attack someone you don't know.

everyone deserves to be treated with respect. that's what i believe. i will not ignore someone who is lonely. i will not make decisions about someone when in reality, i know nothing about them. i will not FORGET what a person has done, but i WILL forgive them.

because in a world where we are all so far apart yet so connected, forgiveness is something that needs to be practiced more often.