{"id":2273,"date":"2012-10-18T08:11:23","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T13:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/?p=2273"},"modified":"2012-10-18T08:11:23","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T13:11:23","slug":"something-to-think-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/?p=2273","title":{"rendered":"Something to think about"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I will begin by assuring you that this is not a political post. This post is about asking all of us (including myself) to take a step back to look at the bigger picture.<\/p>\n

The inspiration for this post came from Facebook. Over the past few months, I have noticed an increasing number of statuses focused on the upcoming political election. The majority of these statuses are benign. However, there have been a few posts that have left me uncomfortable for lack of a better word.<\/p>\n

The statuses\/comments that leave me uncomfortable are those that belittle, degrade, lambaste, or ridicule others for believing in or supporting a particular candidate or cause. Yes, you may argue with me and state that everyone is entitled to and has the right to express his or her opinion (especially in a public forum such as Facebook). However….when have we crossed the line?<\/p>\n

This, my friends, goes well beyond the upcoming presidential election. There have been a few times in my life that I have been belittled or ridiculed for expressing something that I believe in. I am sure that this has been the case for at least one of you. The statement usually sounds something like…<\/p>\n

“YOU are stupid\/naive\/silly\/crazy<\/span> for saying\/doing\/believing\/looking like<\/span> that.”<\/p>\n

As a therapist, I have sat with people who have had some form of that statement directed at them. These are some of the hardest sessions for me. The sessions are hard because I can literally feel the pain that my clients have experienced on account of that statement. The pain is real and is sometimes not easy to brush off.<\/p>\n

The point that I am trying to get across this morning is that words can and do hurt. Maybe this post is just a simple reminder for you (and myself) to be mindful of what we say and how we say it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I will begin by assuring you that this is not a political post. This post is about asking all of us (including myself) to take a step back to look at the bigger picture. The inspiration for this post came from Facebook. Over the past few months, I have noticed an increasing number of statuses focused on the upcoming political Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[11,79],"coauthors":[16],"class_list":["post-2273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acceptance-2","tag-acceptance","tag-perspective"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Respect1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2273"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2901,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273\/revisions\/2901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2273"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}