I lost a friend

I lost a friends Sunday. No, she didn’t die, but she cancelled me from her life. We have been friends for a number of years, with a shared passion for gardening and art. In fact I always said when I grow up I want to be like her. We have always known that we have differing views on politics, faith and life, but I can say I valued the person more than some of their thoughts. That “agree to disagree agreeably” philosophy has echoed through my soul since childhood. But maybe that is the issue. In this age of hiding behind social media it is often easier to make snap judgement of not wanting to deal with disagreement no matter where it is coming from. Its not like a time when you talked things out or tried to understand their perspective. We don’t do that often any more, and it is a shame.

What caused the cancellation? She posted a video of a woman talking about something that was a bold faced lie. This woman was promoting hostility and anger with claims that a recent executive order mandated killing of polar bears and caribou herds. I looked up the executive order and there was no mention of this. Unless polar bears and caribou are a code language for something else I did not understand the complete discrepancy of this video. Thinking i was being a good friend I suggested she look up the executive order and read it herself because that post was far from true. Innocent, I thought. As a friend I value when someone stops me from propagating untrue statements. I guess not everyone wants to only speak truth. So with a few strokes on the keyboard I am history, gone, blocked, cancelled and the friendship we have nurtured is gone.

So how do we handle these kinds of cancellations? Honestly I am learning to minimize my time on social media of any form. Social media has been a grand social engineering experiment to control civilization and to create a dependency on electronics, and the bursts of emotion that come from likes, cat videos, my best breakfast posts and such. Why have we allowed social media to change us, to pit us against each other? Here are my solutions:

• Reduce my daily time on social media. I long ago gave up Facebook and was kicked off of twitter a few years ago. I was holding on to Instagram only for updates on Images in Bloom Studio. And kept my Linked In account albeit i stripped away my career information after retiring from the day job.
• I sent a note to the friend asking if we can meet for coffee and to just talk through this.
• I allowed myself to grieve the possible loss of this friend forever.

Have you had this happen ? How have you coped? And what suggestions would you make for dealing with the cancel culture?