Life & Therapy

This morning on my Facebook feed, I saw a link judging a woman’s parenting out of context.  It was a link to a blog post about a mom on her iPhone written as if it were a letter to her, explaining all that she was missing out on while ignoring her three kids at the playground.  My very first reaction was anger at yet another person judging parents out of context and drawing conclusions about the rest of their lives, then sharing it with the cyber world.  My next reaction was amazement that this mom in question got all three of her kids TO the playground, since I have such trouble getting my two children out of the house on many days.  Next, I had questions for the writer: “If you are at the playground, are you there with your kids, and if so, what about them are you ignoring as you write this judgmental blog entry in your head?”  or, alternatively: “If you are at the playground with no children, is there something in your life you are not attending to while you sit and judge this woman?  If not, then why not go up to her and tell her why you are so upset by her behavior, or give her kids the attention you feel they are missing?”

I spent a lot of this morning feeling bothered by this blog post and had to sort through many feelings and questions.  I was initially tempted to write a snarky Facebook post about people who judge others in this way; I wanted to judge the judger for judging.  Something about that did not feel quite right, so I let myself think about this some more and I arrived at the crux of what bothers me when I see posts like today’s.  This person observed a mother at a playground out of the context of the rest of her reality and came to a conclusion about what the rest of her life looks like.  (I know that I hear the phrase “Mommy watch this!” about 300 times a day, and I can tell you, I do not watch every time).  Next, she writes a public letter to everyone who reads her blog, but never says anything to the woman she is judging so harshly, nor does she go up to the children and give them the attention she feels that they deserve so much.  This does nothing to change this supposedly iPhone addicted mother’s life, or her children’s lives, but it does give people who feel the way the writer feels a sense of justification for their own judgments, and it does give people who talk on their phones while with their children a sense that they are being judged by nameless, perhaps countless, others when they are out in public.

There is an ironic dynamic that happens when someone complains on Facebook or on a blog that someone “out there in the world” has not been present enough in the world because they are too engaged in cyberspace.  This complaint is often followed by vociferous agreement in the form of comments that castigate this person who is not there to participate in the discussion.  Commenters often provide examples of other people they’ve drawn conclusions about based on some other out-of-context observation, and the judging provides either bonding when there is agreement or sniping when there isn’t.  The irony is that most of the people who are having this conversation with each other are focusing a lot of energy judging people who are not even there while “talking” to people who are not even there, about a person who once was there, about not being present!

This is a trap in the world of social media that we all can fall into: we are out in the real world and we see someone doing something we don’t like (or maybe something we do like).  Instead of engaging with that world by talking to that person, how often do we think, “I’m going to Facebook/blog/tweet/etc about that.”?  Thinking that thought still takes us away from the present moment, just as much as picking up the phone and tapping away at the keys.  What if the writer of the judgmental letter had not been composing her blog entry in her head but had instead decided to be present at the playground, to be more curious about who this family was rather than ready to write her conclusions about them to the people who were not there to begin with?  She might have written a much different blog entry, one where we might actually get to hear this woman’s story.  It might be cheering, funny, heartbreaking, inspiring, who knows?  Not us, because we did not get to meet her and hear her story.

If we notice when we are cyber-judging while preparing a script for whichever form of social media we plan to use to share the judgment, we have an opportunity to instead become present in the moment and time that we are in.  It could be that there are feelings we need to address in ourselves that are rising up, or it could be that we are missing out on a chance to meet a real person who is sitting right there next to us.  Either way, I am going to try an experiment.  I plan on noticing when I am Facebooking in my head and then I plan on pausing, noticing just who it is I am talking to in my head, and then trying to notice who or what is actually there in front of me, and what is needed from me in the real world, or what I need from the real world.  Maybe after attending to the present I will have something even more interesting to share later, or maybe nothing needs to be said.  Either way,  I look forward to learning something new.

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