Cancel Culture

 Shame on you for.... fill in the blank.  But isn’t it really shame on me for needing to shame you instead of improving myself. 

I’ll never forget getting home from the hospital with my daughter, 3 days old and against doctors orders because of my c-section, walking 2 blocks to the market because that’s how food and our necessities are procured.  It wasn’t a bother to me at all to do it because I prefer to rely on myself. Walking down an isle I hear a woman say “I would never bring a newborn to a market, I can’t believe her”. 

Shame on me for being self sufficient and harming nobody.  I wonder what part of her life makes her so unhappy that shaming me is a necessary.  What part of us as a person needs to cancel someone. 

Today when I was walking from my car to my house, i wasn’t wearing a mask because I keep my out and about mask in the car and don’t bring it in the house. It’s my thing, mind your business. Well.... Another person passed me in the driveway and she wasn’t wearing a mask, both of us avoided getting close to each other with a nod. Two people being respectful of the other.  Made me wonder where we as a society adopted this need to mind each others business and avoid our own. 

Don’t get me wrong I think people behave horribly and are so disrespectful of other people’s freedom of choice as well as selfishly impeding on others rights when they shouldn’t, I just don’t understand why shaming or canceling something has become the solution instead of self reflection, growing and evolving. It seems to be tied into the ideal that you can fight a wrong with a wrong. Canceling and hating are the same thing with neither having any positive forward momentum. All you’ve done is create this bubble that will pop instead of a ball that’s able to bounce forward and even bounce back to move forward and has the ability to be dynamic and adapt, creating in the end forward motion which is what we need to evolve.