Cloudya

“If you’re not trying to make something better,” Ani Difranco’s gravelly, arrhythmic voice tells me, “then as far as I can tell you are just in the way.”

I don’t know, Ani, I think.  Sometimes you’re just doing what you can to get by, you know?

But I also know what she means, because it’s something I’ve come to realize after years of participating in social media.  Every time you open your metaphorical mouth, you are blessed with an opportunity.  You can make the world better, or you can make it worse.  You can say something helpful, or you can bring everybody down.  And too many people blow it.

Life is not good all the time.  Love is not good all the time.  Anybody who tells you they are happy ALL THE TIME needs to share their pills with the rest of the class.  I am the happiest I’ve ever been, and still I cry every other week.  Sometimes out of frustration.  Sometimes out of grief.  Sometimes out of sheer exhaustion…

“Think of what a paradise this world would be,” wise Mr. Vonnegut says to me, “if men were kind and wise.”

I have a choice.  Every day, every day.  I can be small, or I can be better.

I don’t have a lot of money.  I won’t ever join the peace corps or free Tibet.  But I can be kind.  I can be a butterfly wing of kindness.

Or at the very least, I can keep my mouth shut.