Serve me up some of that Kumbaya Kool-Aid, y'all!

So I'm not sure if any of you caught the little bit of twitter drama that went on last week between a couple of very well-read bloggers that I (and a gajillion other people) happen to read. Out of respect to both of them and to all of the people that blogged about the drama and all that, I will not divulge any names or links or what-have-yous... but the drama got me thinking about compassion and understanding of one another.

I'm currently reading How to Practice - The Way to a Meaningful Life by the Dalai Lama. I've just started it and last night a sentence in it made me sit up in bed, grab a pen, and underline it.

"I believe that the practice of compassion and love - a genuine sense of brotherhood and sisterhood - is the universal religion."

What's that? A universal religion? You mean, something we can ALL believe in? His Holiness goes on to say "It does not matter whether you are Buddhist or Christian, Moslem or Hindu, or whether you practice religion at all. What matters is your feeling of oneness with humankind."

I'm sure some of you are nodding along saying "Why yes, of course! I've always known this" or whatever. But to me it was like the bells on the Price is Right were going off in my head. This is what I've been looking for.

I want to shout it from the rooftops. "Hey y'all! Just stop the hate! We'll all be alright if you all just STOP THE HATE!"

But alas, I am not on my roof shouting. And if I were, I'm sure my neighbors would just aim some of their leftover roman candles in my direction. Besides, it's scary up there on that roof.

See, I think we all have that teenage mentality still running around in our brains. That one that causes us to create posts like this one where we make fun of people walking around on the street because we don't like the way they are dressed. Yep... see... I did it. I took poor nameless people that I don't even know and made fun of them here on the Internet. I feel bad. I do, really. I mean, yes... I know it made me laugh... it made some of you chuckle... it was sort of funny.

But that was not practicing the sort of compassion and kindness I'm going for. That was not helping me along my path to enlightenment. Bad spaz. BAD.

I'm not going to delete the post... it's there and I've done it and I'm going to move on. I can't erase all the things I've done wrong. But I do sincerely apologize to the woman with the butterfly tattoo on her back. I'm sure she had no idea her pants were so low in the back and it would have been a far kinder thing to tap her gently on the shoulder and let her know they needed to be pulled up, rather than post her picture on the Internet. I'd like to say sorry to the woman who had her bra straps showing and let her know that is just the cutest little baby ever! To the woman who wore that super unique funkadelic top while drinking a green slushy drink, I applaud your ability to express yourself! Last, but not least, I do apologize to the woman who wore the UGG boots with the Victoria's Secret "PINK" pants. I realize those boots were at the height of fashion and I probably just have no fashion sense. I am deeply apologetic and you won't find any of those types of posts here again. Pinky promise.

See, I am going to drink the kumbaya kool-aid and I think this world would be a much happier place to be if everyone else would, too. When was it that degrading other people got to be so much fun? Sure, some of us have ideas that appear to be similar to other people's ideas. Holy jack, like that's never happened before! We've got Dear Abby and Ann Landers, Lilly Pulitzer and Bamboo Traders, Coke and Pepsi, Saturday Night Live and MAD TV... shall I go on?

Sure, everyone's entitled to their opinion and everyone entitled to be mean and nasty if they want to be. It's your blog and your mind and no one can tell you what to do with it. Feel free to insult and belittle and try to make yourself feel better all you want. I'm going to try to move away from that type of thinking and I hope some of y'all will join me.

It's a great big blogosphere out there and I think there's room for all of us.