I was listening to the radio today and
the guest speaker said something that really resonated with me. She
said that as Christian we will be judged on how much we have loved
and not on how much we know. It occurred to me that whether you are a
Christian or not most people would do well to remember this. It
surely has to be more important to be loving, kind and generous than
to be the most knowledgeable, have the most or be the popular one?
Without ever having thought of this as
a stand-alone concept I have always had to ask JJ the question –
‘Is it more important to be right or kind?’ He knows what the
best answer is but he is still at an age when the lure of being right
is very appealing. Some people never seem to grow out of that desire
to be right and I do wonder why - Is it so satisfying to know that
you are correct; does it help to make you feel superior? I do wonder
how empty their life must be and how little inner joy they have, that
those outward insignificant things have to take on such worth.
These thoughts about the importance of
being loving have not left me today and I have realised that I must
keep this caring approach at the forefront of my mind. I do strive to
be a nice person, I want to be available to help others when they
need me and I hope to come across as approachable but this has not
always been the case. Well, not unless you ask my Mum, she would
probably tell you I have always been an angel! However, I know I’ve
been on a journey and turn the clock back 15 years and people might
not have used such positive words to describe me, but I refuse to
beat myself up about the past, God has forgiven me and wiped clean my
slate and it is therefore imperative I do the same.
I was surprised earlier to find myself
thinking of this radio comment in relation to blogging. I realised
that many people in the blogging world would do well to remember that
it is more important to be loving than to be knowledgeable, right,
popular or whatever else it is they desire. I feel as if my eyes have
been open to the fact that blogging is just like any other part of
life for quite some time. I found out early on that there are some
truly supportive people, some champions who will go out of their way
for you and then there are those wearing their masks and pretending
to be sweetness, luring you in to their evil games and they think
nothing of trampling over you as they win points against their
opponents or climb up the popularity charts. There are of course
lots of other people sitting in the middle, some dipping into
blogging, others diving in and becoming so absorbed they lose sight
of real life and what it is all about.
Blogging is wonderful and rewarding but
highly addictive and it can bring out the worst traits in people. You
only have to watch my Twitter timeline at the time of the month when
the Tots100 updates to see that some people go through every possible
emotion as they ponder why ‘so and so’ is more popular than them,
why they have not moved up in the chart despite their best month ever
and what else they have to do to rank higher when they have already
slogged their guts out that month.
I’m not perfect, don’t worry about
that. There have been times when I have yearned to be more popular
in blogging terms, to have such a wonderful technical knowledge like
XYZ or to be able to create a visual fest like ABC. But I’m me,
perfectly as God created me. I can only be me. I am so glad that I
got my head around the fact that I do not have to fit in with
blogging. In fact there is no such thing as fitting in with blogging
or parenting blogging or any other blogging circle you frequent. We
are talking about 4000-5000 parenting blogs alone that is a massive
number. Would you ever fit in with that amount of people in a real
life situation? Hardly! You just have to find the bunch of people
that you relate to or fell most comfortable with and spend time with
them, or don’t spend time with them, the choice is always yours. A
while back I sent a tweet in response to a comment on a recent post I
wrote about blogging, it said ‘I used to try to fit in but now I
just dip in, it’s much more me’ and I think that sums things up
nicely. Be you. You are perfect as you are. Be immersed in blogging
or don’t, the choice is yours - just enjoy and be content!
Ohh and ignore
the negative bloggers that try to sap your energy, they are not worth
it, they obviously have issues and you know what they say, what goes
around comes around.
So now over to you, have you found
your happy medium yet? And any advice you want to share with other
bloggers to help them maintain perspective? Just leave a comment….